On Innocents Lost and the Loss of Innocence
by noenigma
Summary: Two very different cases with far too many similarities...a look at Inspector Morse "Second Time Around" and Lewis "The Dead of Winter".
1. Prologue

This one is based on Inspector Morse _Second Time Around_ and Lewis _The Dead of Winter. _I hope I've managed to convey my love and appreciation for those who made these two shows so great because the sort of similarities woven so beautifully and fully into them don't happen by accident.

_The Dead of Winter is _another one of those episodes that I've known sooner or later would have to be stared in the eye and wrestled into words. A job not for the fainthearted even if Hathaway finding the little girl didn't draw a straight line back to Morse finding little Mary. It's a story with a scope I'm not sure I'm up to doing justice, but one that wouldn't leave me alone all the same. I've dreaded the day it demanded to be written, and I've loved it and hated it and everything in between in the process of getting it down. It 's been too emotionally-fraught a journey to even say at this point whether I'm pleased with the thing, but here's hoping it's not as bad as I sometimes fear it might be…

Disclaimer: Purely for fan purposes; no copyright infringement intended…

Prologue:

The cases, for all they were close to twenty years apart, bore more than a few uncanny resemblances to each other. Perhaps not the cases so much, as their investigations…at least to the man who'd lived through them both. (Or was that 'whom had lived through them both'? He'd never quite gotten it down to Morse's everlasting frustration. )

There'd been the children, of course. In the one case, Mary Lapsley 18 years dead before the case was ever even opened, as far as Lewis was concerned, and Barbara Redpath and Terrence Miller grown to adulthood in the shadow of her death. And in the other, the kids from the estate: Paul Hopkiss, Scarlett Mortmaigne, Briony Grahame, and James Hathaway himself. All but Briony grown into big lads and lasses but all still touched by a murder from nine years in the past, and a time much farther back when Butch and Sundance had ridden over the hills of Crevecoeur while Morse and Lewis had chased about Oxford reinvestigating Little Mary's murder.

Little Mary had been killed almost by accident by one sad, confused lad, and Linda Grahame very much purposely by another for all he'd been trapped in a grown man's body. Horrible acts had been covered up in the name of love and family; one bad decision leading ever onward to the next. And more murders committed to keep the first buried.

Along with the children had been the parents: John Mitchell and Linda Grahame both attempting to protect their children and both being killed in the process. There'd been Mrs. Mitchell valiantly and pathetically trying to carry on for her son's sake under her crippling load of guilt, shame, and grief. Patrick Dawson sacrificing his beliefs and career to avenge his daughter and getting it all terribly wrong. And there was Mortmaigne who didn't deserve the loyalty and love of his daughter or that of the boy who killed for him. Who had in fact stolen their innocence and twisted their lives beyond repair.

In addition, both cases had exacted a horrible price from Lewis' partner of the day. Morse, struggling to fight through the memories of finding little Mary, wrestling with the horrible knowledge that her death had created a monster in a man he'd counted as a respected colleague. And Hathaway… Lewis couldn't even begin to know just how hard the case had been for him. His childhood memories had been overshadowed by Mortmaigne's evil—whether or not that evil had touched him in the past; that girl had messed with his head and stomped on his heart; and all of it had been tangled up with the horror of the Zelinsky case coming as it did when his sergeant had been reeling from that trial.

As for Lewis... besides the price he couldn't help but pay whenever his old chief inspector or his current sergeant took an emotional battering, both cases had carried with them a hefty price for him as well. He'd come close to losing his career in the first and his sergeant and his life in the second.


	2. Part One

The night that had catapulted Mary Lapsley into Lewis' life had been the night of the big do celebrating retired Assistant Commissioner Charlie Hillian and his shiny new OBE. Lewis had stood about in formal attire (which his wife told him made him look quite dashing and she'd made him half-believe it though by the time he dug it out for that ill-fated weekend in Glyndebourne he looked in the mirror and saw only a wine waiter) drinking wine to Morse's rather hypocritical disapproval and learning things about his chief inspector he'd never known before. All in all, it had been an interesting evening. Hard to believe the next morning he and Morse were investigating Hillian's murder.

It had been a totally different sort of public event that led into the other case. Lewis would much rather have been squirming about in his constricting wine waiter suit listening to his chief inspector grouse about the amount he was drinking rather than waiting for his sergeant's name to be called in the Zelinsky murder trial.

On his part, Hathaway had waited stoically. Only the wiggling fingers giving vent to the pent up emotions hidden behind his expressionless face for the majority of the time. But, by the end, nerves or dread had him slightly rocking back and forth, worrying his knuckles, and looking for all the world like a little boy in big trouble awaiting his punishment. If only that had been all he had been waiting to face. A whipping or a good talking to, even a dressing-down from Innocent, would have been far preferable.

Lewis himself found it much harder to wait quietly for the call even though he was only there for moral support. He would have liked to spare Hathaway the coming ordeal, said, "Come on, let's go and do some proper work," and walked straight out of the building with his sergeant firmly in tow. But that wasn't on so he just wished it was done already. And stayed there waiting alongside his sergeant. Hathaway quite probably wished he'd just leave him to it. But that wasn't on either.

Hathaway had appeared before the court more than once; part of their job, to testify of what they'd done and what they'd seen, and how it all led to the arrest of the accused before them. Lewis, too, had stood in the box before, countless times. Sometimes quite happily nailing the coffin shut and sometimes reluctantly. He'd never lied—never like Morse chosen to bend the truth when he thought justice would be better served outside the courtroom than in*. (He'd understood what Morse had done that day, but he'd never been tempted to go that way himself. One of the many ways they'd been cut from a different cloth, him and his old chief inspector.) He'd never particularly enjoyed the process, but he'd never had cause to dread it quite as much as Hathaway did at that moment.

After an eternity of waiting, the summons came far too soon. "Detective Sergeant Hathaway."

"All right?" Lewis asked because he couldn't very well let him go without saying anything.

And, "Yep," Hathaway answered though any fool could tell he wasn't because he couldn't very well walk off without saying something in return. And then he did walk off, and Lewis let him go for there was nothing else he could do. There couldn't have been a worse start to the day; a worse harbinger of the things that were to come.

Before Hathaway had even begun to affirm the evidence he gave would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Lewis was called away to a suspicious death which would that very day lead Hathaway into the minefield that was Crevecoeur.

Lewis being at the trial or not was irrelevant to his sergeant. The inspector's presence wouldn't have made it any easier to choke out the truth as horrible as it was: The attic was dark…dusty…confined…I lifted the lid from the uh…uh the uh…water …cistern…and…um…

_His first reaction had been the almost overpowering urge to retch…a little girl, barely ten, cruelly killed and stuffed into the cistern and he'd wanted to retch. It wasn't so much the smell though that had been bad enough or even the days of decomposition or the horribleness of the mutilations though those too had been bad enough to see…still he hadn't had time to take them in. It had, he thought been the unnaturalness of it, the still form of a child…her head bent at an awkward angle so her empty eyes had stared horribly up at him as though pleading with him. Begging for help and release and an end to her suffering. And he'd wanted to retch._

_What did that make him? A little girl and he'd all but sicked up all over that attic, almost exclaimed in horror and fallen backwards and stumbled away from her. It hadn't been right. She'd been only a little girl, he should have…what?_

_There'd really been nothing he could have done for her…he couldn't have held her, comforted, brought her back to life, erased those last terrifying hours of her life, eased her pain, saved her. _

_Still, he regretted his initial reaction. Would regret it all of his life. _

By the time Hathaway was choking out the details, Hobson was asking Lewis, "He found the girl, didn't he? Hathaway?" Because it changed everything. The finding of a child's body.

Lewis had seen that, heard that, in the remembrances of Chief Inspector Morse, voiced and unvoiced, on finding the body of little Mary many years before. And read it all too plainly in the silences emanating from Hathaway's haunted features whenever the Zelinsky case was brought up. Lewis, the only father between the three of them, couldn't imagine the heartbreak involved in finding a child's lifeless body. He could only be everlastingly thankful his own children were safe and sound and stand silently beside Morse and Hathaway when the terribleness of it all washed through them…

_Morse, mindful of the crime scene but unable to help himself, knelt beside the small, lifeless body. He straightened her dress, dirty with the day's play (which he imagined loving hands could have washed clean before hanging it to dry and smoothing out the wrinkles and lovingly putting it away), and stained with great splotches of dried blood that would never be washed away. Exhibit C, bagged and labeled and stored in the Evidence Room, never again to twirl as a little girl played in the sun._

_He ran his hand over her tangled hair, smoothing it down like he imagined loving hands had done only that morning. He leaned over very carefully and kissed her soft forehead as someone surely would have done if only she'd been home to be tucked up into bed as she should have been. Then, very slowly, for a deep, unbearable sadness pressed heavily against him, he stood._

_"__Good night, sweet Mary," he said quietly. "I'm so very sorry." And he was. Sorry he couldn't carry her home with her little arms around his neck and her tired head nodding against his shoulder to be petted over and scolded for giving her grandmother such a fright. Sorry for what had been done to her. Sorry he hadn't arrived soon enough to save her (though it was apparent she'd been dead long before the alarm had sounded). Sorry she'd lain alone and cold so long before he'd found her. Sorry he must take his torch and leave her once again in the dark…_

And silently standing there didn't seem nearly enough there in that bus with Hobson and her "Is he seeing someone?" as though a counsellor stood a snowball's chance of doing any better.

And at the end of the case, it seemed even less than enough at Crevecoeur the morning after its horrible truth had been dug up and exposed to the light of day like a slow motion replay of Hathaway finding the little girl's body in that cistern—the only difference being that these bodies, Paul and Briony, and he hated to think it but maybe James beside him as well, had somehow managed to survive the atrocities done to them by Mortmaigne while Hathaway's little lass hadn't survived Zelinsky's evil. Oh, Mortmaigne had tried to make him think there was a difference (_I loved them. I loved them, _he'd insisted, but Lewis would have liked him to try to tell Morse or Hathaway that. No, they'd found the bodies, the children, and that alone bore testimony to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

*_Service of All the Dead,_ Inspector Morse


	3. Part Two

The investigation into Charlie Hillian's death had been quite a big do in its own right. One of their own, one very well-liked and respected—they'd had the whole station turn out eager to help going through Hillian's old cases and tracing people he had put away. Lewis managed to avoid all the hustle and jostling by trekking out to Fern Street and interviewing Terrence Mitchell. It had been clear that the Mitchell lad wasn't quite right, but he'd seemed innocent enough to Lewis. Which was more of less what he said to Morse following the rather unprofessional pathologist's report they received from the covering locum. ("Dead as a dodo." "Whammo! Lights out!" Oi!)

"What he said, Sir? About the thin skull and all? Maybe it was unintentional?" he asked as they stalked away from the mortuary.

Morse didn't much care. Unintentional or not, if someone had caused Hillian to hit his head resulting in his death it was all murder to him. "Well, that doesn't help Hillian," he said. "What about Mitchell?"

"Too sensitive a soul for that that kind of thing," Lewis pronounced with a great deal of misplaced certainty. "An artist, Sir,"

"Adolf Hitler dabbled in oils." Morse remarked. "Did you know that, Lewis?"

"I thought he was more of a watercolours man, actually," Lewis answered trying not to smirk or sound as pleased as he was to know something that Morse obviously didn't. It was far too rare of an occurrence for him to gloat overly much.

"Whatever," Morse said and dropped the lecture. He soon thereafter left Lewis to make a start on the paperwork while he himself enjoyed a walk. (Which Lewis had understandably taken to mean he was going for a beer, but when they'd brought in Frederick Redpath and Lewis had went looking for him Morse wasn't in any of the pubs he searched but _actually walking.*) _

The interview with Redpath proved most unenlightening. As Morse said afterwards, "I've never heard so many lies. It was like sitting through an election campaign." (Only, Lewis reckoned, even politicians managed to sound a bit more plausible than Redpath had.)

"Maybe he was afraid, sir," Lewis offered. "Maybe he didn't want to get involved." Where he'd been so utterly wrong with his assessment of Terrence Mitchell, he was totally right about Redpath.

"Maybe," Morse agreed with a troubled frown. "I've seen him somewhere before, Lewis…can't think where."

A moment later they were accosted by the man's daughter insisting her father was innocent and should be released at once. Morse almost turned and went on without deigning to answer her loud and angry recriminations, but something made him stop. He was not a man to use physical intimidation, but he drew himself up to his full height and stalked over to her. He also was not a man to raise his voice relying on the truth of his words and the authority of his position to speak loudly enough that it was unnecessary to do so. In this case, his message came through loud and clear.

"I'm investigating the murder of a former policeman, Miss Redpath. Your father was seen at the victim's cottage. A fact he initially denied. 'Now, why should he do that?' I ask myself. When I get an answer to that he can go; until then he stays put."

And stay put Redpath did for he was no more inclined to explain himself the next morning than he'd been the night before.

"Why hasn't he asked for a lawyer, Lewis?" Morse asked when they'd given up trying to get anything from the man. "Why hasn't his daughter brought him one—she seems the type?"

Lewis retrieved the tea he'd had to leave in the hallway when Morse had decided it was time to interview their subject and said, "Beats me. I explained his rights to him." He removed the plastic lid off the cup and peered suspiciously at his tea.

"Listen, I want to have a look at Hillian's notes. Find out what time Dawson's due back from London and meet him off the train, will you? I'm sure he'll want to become acquainted with Redpath. And drink your tea before it gets cold." But too late for that. No surprise. And all because he'd not known to expect Morse back so soon from his visit with Mr. Majors, the author helping Hillian write his book, and therefore hadn't picked him up a tea and sandwich when he'd fetched his own. Morse wouldn't have begrudged a few minutes to drink their tea hot then, but lacking one himself, and being a bit tetchety about it…well, that was Morse all over for you. Lewis pulled a face and left the tea there in the hallway. At least, the sandwich was still good.

He collected Chief Inspector Dawson from the train station on time and safely delivered him to the police station as well. And Morse was right; on hearing about Redpath, Dawson was very keen to see the man who might very well be the murderer of his long-time colleague and friend. But when Lewis opened the door to the holding cell for the chief inspector…

Dawson stepped down one step into the room and halted there. "What is this, Morse?" he asked. His voice calm and quiet enough that Lewis, entering the room after him, had no warning what was to come.

"What is this?" Dawson said again, his voice rising as he turned to stare at Lewis.

"What's wrong, sir?" Lewis asked just at the point Dawson erupted.

"What is this, you little toe rag?" he demanded, but even if Lewis would have known what the man was going on about he couldn't have answered. Dawson flew at him and grabbed him by the collar and who knew what he would have done to him if the constable at the door hadn't been there to slow him down.

Morse rushed up the stairs yelling, "Dawson, let him go!" Even with the constable fighting to restrain Dawson and get him away from Lewis, and Morse joining in, the chief inspector from London managed to keep a tight hold on Lewis' collar. Lewis fought to free himself as Morse yelled at Dawson. "He didn't know! I didn't know until now!" Lewis finally pulled free of Dawson's hold. He'd been in a tussle or two before. Nature of the job and all. But still. Adrenaline running rampant through him, he pulled at the clothes constricting his neck while he fought to regain his air and his temper. Morse went on trying to reach Dawson, "You kept us all away, remember. Remember? I didn't see him until the day he walked out of here. Now, think man."

Finally, the fight went out of Dawson. He tried to shake the constable's grip on him and ordered, "'Hands off!" The constable loosened his hold, but it was only at Morse's affirming nod that he moved away.

A crowd of officers had gathered down the hall. Upon seeing them Morse ordered, "All right, all right, back upstairs." Lewis stalked halfway down the hall to see that the officers did move along, and then back to stop a few paces from Morse and Dawson. Dawson was straightening his clothes and regaining his composure, but Lewis was still fighting to salvage his.

"Sorry, Morse," Dawson said. "It was the shock of seeing him there."

"Your apology would be better directed to Sergeant Lewis," Morse said.

Lewis tugged once again at his tie, and managed a not-at-all-reconciliatory-sounding, "It'll not be necessary." An apology wouldn't even come close to settling the waters.

Dawson was much more concerned about the man they'd left in the interview room than he was about the man he'd attacked. He didn't hear Morse's words, let alone Lewis'. "You must let me talk to him, Morse. I know him better than anyone."

"You can't, Sir! You saw him just then!" Lewis burst out, "He's a bloody madman!"

"Lewis." Morse silenced him before telling his fellow chief inspector, "Lay a finger on him and I'll finish you." And then to Lewis' surprise and disgruntlement, Morse walked off and left Redpath to Dawson. Lewis shut his mouth on the protests welling up in him and went after Morse. He wanted to know what had just happened and why.

_*This is a scene reenacted on one Lewis or another that I didn't take the time to track down. Hathaway just about runs Lewis down when he pulls up to tell him whatever it is he's been looking for him for, while Lewis is a wee bit more careful approaching Morse. I love the little things like this the creators of these two shows work in…and I'm hoping to see many of the same on Endeavour._


	4. Part Three

In stark contrast to the stir around Hillian's death, Dr. Black's demise and its subsequent investigation got off to a much quieter start. The death itself almost overshadowed by the mysterious shooting (hardly more than a flesh wound) at that morning's reenactment. A body left sitting on an empty tour bus looking more like a run-of-the-mill coronary than a murder even to the pathologist right up until she stuck her gloved hand behind the body to move it forward and brought it out covered in blood. The shooting out at Crevecoeur with its milling crowds of onlookers and participants to interview required an entire investigative team and extras drafted in. But, the duty sergeant had deemed the body on the bus to warrant no more than Lewis even if his sergeant was tied up in court. And for those first hours, the duty sergeant hadn't been wrong.

Easy enough for one man to interview the tour bus driver and ascertain the body could have ridden from one local attraction to the next, and its fellow passengers might easily have never noticed. Easy enough for one man to oversee Pathology's looksee before the body was moved.

"So what have you got for me?" Hobson asked walking down the bus aisle ahead of Lewis.

"Suspicious death."

"Middle-aged, overweight, smoker…been drinking, too," she noted as she looked over the body. "If I had a pound for every suspicious that turned out to be a common or garden heart attack…"

"The blood on his chin?"

"Could have bit his tongue. People do," the doctor said, pulling out a wallet and handing it to Lewis. As he looked through it for I.D., Hobson stepped closer and said, "He found the girl, didn't he? Hathaway?"

"He's a big lad," Lewis answered without looking her way.

"Oh, you boys. Never let anyone in," she said in a mocking tone that she hoped masked her true feelings about that statement. "What is that, do you suppose? Learned behavior, fathers and sons?"

He glanced her way, but he was not interested in furthering this particular conversation—he'd had more than enough rows with Val over the like; though he'd never seen the problem…he'd never kept her out of anything for all she'd occasionally felt otherwise. "Monkey see, monkey do," he threw out just to keep Hobson from hammering on—not that he didn't enjoy hearing her talk, Dr. Hobson, on a good number of topics; just not this one, and he did have an investigation to get on with.

She wasn't having any of it. "Seriously," she said, "has he seen anyone?"

"Like who?"

"A counsellor?" she suggested, moving back finally to the body.

"He'll be all right. Better than Dr. Stephen Black," Lewis said reading the I.D. he'd pulled from the wallet.

"Oh…I take it all back," Hobson said pulling her blood-stained, blue-gloved hand out from behind the body. "It wasn't a heart attack."

Back at the station, Lewis found his sergeant already there working on some report or another. Hathaway's face was tightlipped and closed off—and wouldn't Hobson have a field day with that? But it wasn't for Lewis to pry it out of him. So, though his curious nature alone ensured he had a fair number of them, Lewis left his questions about the trial sit awhile and went about briefing his sergeant on their new investigation—throwing himself at his work had always helped Lewis deal with the trials of the day, and he couldn't imagine it would do Hathaway any harm either (though later…well, hindsight and all that).

"We need to establish where he joined this magical mystery tour," he began to wrap up.

"Nobody saw him get on?" Hathaway asked. It was the most he'd managed since Lewis had arrived.

"Well, you know these tours. People are so busy gawping; they don't pay much heed to their fellow travelers."

"I might notice if there was a corpse sat next to me," Hathaway spat out.

Lewis let the terse comment go, handed him the tour itinerary and said, "See if you can find out if anybody saw him along the way."

"Where will you be?"

"Kidlington for starters. Tudor Crescent. Where he lived. I'll try to find out a bit more about him." Lewis headed toward the door, and if it wouldn't have been for Laura Hobson, he wouldn't have paused there and asked questions he knew he had no business asking. "How'd it go?"

"Zelinsky changed his plea after all that."

"Result, then," Lewis said in what he knew was a futile attempt to look on the bright side. If Hathaway had wanted to look on the bright side, he wouldn't have been sitting about with his face stoically set like a royal guard throughout Lewis' report. Just like Morse, Hathaway was, in such things. Determined to hold onto his troubles—or, maybe just unable to let his troubles go. Either way it made for some rather strained office time, and Lewis could do without it. And just as well Hobson wasn't around or she'd be giving him the eye and muttering about glass houses, but…well, he'd be the last to deny that since Val had died he'd become a bit more like his old chief inspector himself.

Hathaway sniffed. "Remanded for sentencing, pending a social report, which will probably say he had a very unhappy childhood."

"Well, did he?"

"Who didn't?" Hathaway shot back as though unhappy childhoods were a given. And Lewis, who'd had a very nice one, thank you very much, and had worked to ensure his own children did as well, hated to hear it coming from his sergeant. "But, we don't all go around abducting ten-year-old girls, do we?"

"Court's decision, thankfully. We just nick 'em. Why God created beer," Lewis found himself going on and on although it was doing no good, and he knew it. And would he have found all of this easier without Hobson's niggling comments? Ah…they'd get through the day and finish it off with a few beers in the time-honoured way and sooner or later Hathaway would snap out of it, wouldn't he? "Listen—"

"You didn't find her." Hathaway cut him off. No, and he was glad of it. He'd found a body or two through the years—he did his best to never think about Morse's old inspector McNutt laying there dead in Morse's airing cupboard. Opening that cupboard to pull out a few shirts to take to Morse and finding McNutt there had given Lewis such a nasty shock he hadn't even been able to call out to Chief Inspector Bottomley in the next room. And young Peter Morris buried under that pile of coke...

"No," he answered. "I know." Almost, he walked away then because that said it all, didn't it? He hadn't found her; there was nothing he could say to help his sergeant who had…nothing, but he did think to mention, "Oh, you'll probably bump into Hooper and some of the other lads on your travels." (And if he hadn't been in such a hurry to escape the tenseness in the room and avoid saying yet one more thing to make it worse, he might have noticed the effect his next words had on Hathaway, but he'd turned and was gone by the time they detonated.) "There was a firearms incident at one of the staging posts this morning….Creevecor…Crevecoeur? Hall."

For Hathaway returning to the place of so many of his childhood memories was like coming home. Everything was the same, and nothing was the same. How many years had he attended the reenactment, carried high on his father's shoulders, taking in all the pageantry and gaiety and seeing not at all the grim reality of the skirmish it commemorated? Only that final year before they left, when he'd grown almost as tall as a good number of grown men though he'd still had a good number of centimetres to go before he reached his full height, had he gotten to join in on the battle himself—and what just-turned, twelve-year-old boy wouldn't have loved that? Certainly not the one he'd been. By then he'd devoured all the military history books in the Mortmaigne private collection as well as those precious few he'd been able to talk Lady Mortmaigne into bringing him back from her occasional trips to the Bodleian. He could have staged the reenactment blow by blow if they'd let him.

And pulling up to see all the participants still in their battle clothes…he'd missed this. Amidst all the hustle and bustle of the crowd gathered at his old home, there were those from his new life scattered about. He'd bumped right into the team investigating that firearms incident Lewis had mentioned.

"Oh, stand to. It's the Brain Trust." Hooper with his 'man off the street' chip on his shoulder. "Heard you've got a body on a bus, sarge."

"And you?" Hathaway asked him. He was used to the ribbings from Hooper's ilk; they seemed to feel it was their right to rile the graduate-entry officers like himself. He'd never taken much note; petty jealousies really. Senseless, baseless, and the men who made a habit of it were men Hathaway didn't put much stock in to start with. He'd learned playing along and letting them have their fun while he showed them up without much effort worked rather well for both sides.

"One of that lot, shot that lot…" Hooper explained, pointing. "Reenactment society…only some daft sod actually loaded his rifle."

"Musket, Hooper."

"Hmph. Apparently, there was a battle here, back in the day. Lord knows what it was about though—"

"It was about the divine right of kings," Hathaway informed him. "English Civil War. It wasn't a battle; it was a skirmish. Third Siege of Oxford, May, 1646."

Hooper had enough of the history lesson and sent him on his way, "The house is just up there, if that's what you're looking for. Can't miss it, great big ship of a place. Never seen anything like it."

Hathaway hadn't needed told. It was a strange feeling seeing the place after so long a time. He'd left it a boy, and now came back a man. Though it really wasn't coming back, was it? His days here were long gone; he was an intruder on the estate, not a resident. As Scarlett—Scarlett, and had he ever really thought he'd see her again? Imagined it a hundred times, but never thought it possible. Even coming to the estate today, he'd thought she'd be…well, he didn't know what he'd thought, but he'd not harboured any illusions she'd be there—soon pointed out, driving up in a fancy, little car and calling him over.

"Excuse me…why are there police cars all over the—James?" she asked, disbelief ripe in her voice. "It is James Hathaway, isn't it?" And he fancied he heard the same pleasure in her voice at seeing him as he felt in seeing her.

"Hello, Scarlett," he said. The investigation into the murder of Dr. Black suddenly becoming much more interesting. And much more complicated.

They stood there a few minutes, laughing over old times, catching up on the years in between…

"I'm not sure I can quite see you as Father Hathaway," she said.

"Yeah. Nor could I, in the end," he admitted, and they went on to her life among the idle rich and her wedding to Fabio…

"We all make mistakes," she said, laughing it off. "And you?"

"Mistakes? Plenty, I'm sure," he answered, and how easy it was to talk to her as though they'd both still been kids and running into each other every day of the week. Only, she was very much grown up…and every bit as beautiful a woman as he'd thought she must be. He could have stood there and talked to her on and on—and considering Lewis would be expecting some sort of a report from him in the near future, he did stay talking with her much longer than he should have.

"Of the matrimonial variety?"

"No."

"Perhaps we should compare notes," she said, and if he hadn't been distracted by Lewis ringing his mobile, his heart would surely have skipped or beat or two at that.

"Sorry," he said.

"Of course," she said. "Well, it's uh…" and she leaned over and _kissed_ his cheek. _His._ "Call me," she said, and he stood there like a dolt with his mouth opened and didn't say a thing. "Or not," she said easily, probably misreading his expression and his silence.

He fumbled for something to say, anything to keep her there with him, to not let this opportunity slip away. "I…uh…I don't have your number," he called after her departing back.

"You're a detective, aren't you?" she said, throwing a smile over her shoulder and running up the front steps.

And so both cases also had the case sergeant getting trounced: Lewis physically by Dawson and Hathaway emotionally by Scarlett. Neither had the least bit of warning it was coming, and neither was quite sure how to handle it.


	5. Part Four

Morse didn't ask Lewis if he was all right following Dawson's attack; and Lewis was far more interested in learning what it had all been about at any rate. Morse told the sorry tale ('a tragedy as dark as any' as Mr. Majors, the author, had so aptly put it) slowly as though dragging the words and the memories out piece by piece was the only way he could tell it…

"Mary Lapsley. She was eight years old. Eight years old, Lewis, and pretty as...even in death. " Morse paused there. Night had fallen outside and the office was dim and so quiet that almost Lewis could have believed they were the only ones left in the building for all he knew Dawson was interviewing Redpath just down the hall. Morse went on then, "Redpath knew her. She played with his daughter, visited his house. They had him in for a week—Hillian and Dawson. This place was electric." Morse sighed. "There was talk of excess," he said heavily because Morse may have bent the rules now and again, but never in that way, and it shamed him to think such things had gone on while he'd sat by and said nothing. "Particularly from Dawson."

Morse sighed again and stalked to the window. He stared out as though he could see the scene he was recounting. "She was in a boathouse by a lake. Local anglers used it; Redpath—Briers as he was then—was one of them. I found a knife in the boathouse. It turned out to be Redpath's. He said he'd lost it a year before the killing…"

"You said you found the knife, Sir," Lewis said. "Was it you that found the little girl?"

Morse turned to look at Lewis and said quietly, "Yes." Morse busied himself pouring an orange juice before he went on. That 'yes' hanging in the air between them as though it had a life of its own; Lewis chose to swallow down any other questions he had along with his tea.

"Redpath—Briers—claimed he was home with his daughter at the time of the killing," Morse finally picked up his tale. "She was asleep upstairs. He never wavered from that. So they had to let him go. No one else was ever held for the murder—"

Chief Inspector Dawson opened the door without bothering to knock and, without regard to what he might be interrupting, started giving Morse a recap of his talk with Redpath. Lewis stood and turned to face Dawson because his throat was still raw and red and he wasn't about to turn his back on the man. Redpath's account as told by Dawson sounded much like the lies the man had been feeding them all along.

No wonder Morse didn't bother to hide his disbelief when he asked, "And you believe that?" Hillian's notes on the Lapsley case are missing. We've proved he was at the cottage. Now he comes up with another lie to cover himself."

"You're wrong, Morse. Wrong," Dawson said with conviction, but the visit they made the next morning to Hillian's house to speak with the housekeeper seemed to prove Morse wasn't. She'd heard the doorbell two times that afternoon; if Redpath had come looking for Charlie to ask what he planned on writing in his book about Mary's murder and rung the bell as he claimed—she should have heard it then as well. (A pity that not one of the three trained detectives listening to her gave a thought to her heavy-duty mixing machine and the racket it must have made mixing up those scones she'd made that fateful afternoon.)

Her statement seemed damning enough. Dawson stalked about his old friend's house insisting that Redpath was most definitely not guilty regardless of her testimony. Morse threw up his hands and left him to it. Dawson eventually stopped his agitated pacing and stood staring through a back window. Lewis joined him there and saw he was looking out at Terrence Mitchell working on the fence.

Listening to Morse the evening before and hearing how charged the Lapsley case had been, Lewis had found it in himself to overlook Dawson's attack. Not condone it, mind, but find it in himself to let bygones be bygones though Dawson had not yet (nor would he ever) apologized for the incident or even acknowledged it for that matter.

"I envy blokes who work with their hands, Sir," Lewis said as though he'd not have minded being a handy man or brickie himself.

"Have you spoken to him?" Dawson asked.

"Yeah. His name's Mitchell. From over on Fern Street," Lewis answered.

From the doorway, Morse spoke up too soon if Dawson would have given something away at the mention of that name.

"I think it's time we had another chat with Redpath, don't you?" Morse asked. But Frederick Redpath had already hung himself from the window bars of his cell and was even then being cut down. He wouldn't be talking anytime soon. And by the time he was, the case would have taken a decidedly different turn.


	6. Part Five

The later case, the Mortmaigne case…it, too, took a decidedly different turn in there somewhere…

After, Hathaway had finally spoken to Lewis (reporting his own lack of progress, and learning from Lewis that their Dr. Black was an academic—in Oxford? who would have thought?—and a crossword fiend with letters lying about from Lonsdale College; Lewis wanted him to follow up on a Frances Woodville; and oh, by the way…they were going to need animal welfare out), he walked up the steps he'd only just watched Scarlett run up. His mind so full of her that he half-way introduced himself to the man at the door before he recognized him…

"Paul?" he asked in surprise and yet more disbelief. Were all of his childhood chums about waiting for him to blunder into them? Had he been the only one to escape the place?

"That's correct, sir. Hopkiss, sir," the man at the door said formally obviously failing to recognize Hathaway. Not that the sergeant blamed him. They'd both grown up since last they'd run laughing and shouting over the hills of the estate as twelve-year-olds.

"It's James…Hathaway," he told Paul—Hopkiss.

"Good heavens! Well, bless me…my apologies. I should have recognized you at once." Hopkiss said as they smiled at one another and shook hands. "How very nice to see you again at Crevecoeur, after all this time. What's it been now?"

"Near enough twenty years."

"Twenty years," Hopkiss repeated, no doubt finding it as hard to believe as Hathaway did himself. Then smiled again and said, "Butch and Sundance ride again, sir." With that he led Hathaway into the Hall.

"Your parents still live at the gatehouse?" Hathaway asked, and Hopkiss filled him in on his father's death and his mother's remarriage. Before Hathaway could ask Hopkiss to pass along his regards to his mother, a young girl in a servant's uniform ran smack into him with a serving tray. Cups scattered and tea spilt all over Hathaway's front.

"I'm sorry!" the girl cried, but Hathaway was quick to assure her and Hopkiss it was his fault—it wasn't. In a house like Crevecoeur it was the servants' job to make sure such things didn't happen; but the girl, Briony, seemed so upset by the mishap that Hathaway found it easy to forgive the mess she'd made of his shirt. Hopkiss directed Briony to clear up the mess—spit spot! Now that was something Hathaway hadn't heard in a good twenty years. The language of his misspent youth; ages out-of-date even then, but a favorite of Mr. Hopkiss when he'd run the house as his son apparently did now.

"If you'll come this way, sir? I'm afraid we're all at sixes and sevens with preparations for Lady Scarlett's engagement," Hopkiss said, and that news brought Hathaway's forward progress to a momentary halt. But then Hopkiss was announcing him to Scarlett's father and there'd been yet another reunion.

"Hathaway? Well, I never!" Lord Mortmaigne said. He stood up in surprise and took off his glasses to better see him. "James! James the Just. That's what we used to call you, isn't it?" he asked waving his glasses at Hathaway. Hathaway didn't remember that—and wasn't sure he wanted to. What had that all been about? There followed an awkward conversation with the lord only half convinced he wasn't that young boy he'd been but a grown man; a policeman there not to investigate the shooting accident but to trace a man who _might_ have been at Crevecoeur that day.

In the middle of their interview, the Lord's wife, Selina Mortmaigne, came in to announce the wounded man had returned from hospital. She introduced herself happily enough until Mortmaigne pointed out that Hathaway was a policeman at which point her warm, welcoming, lady-of-the-manor cooled considerably. Hathaway didn't take it personally…though later when the Lord himself said, "A policeman…your parents must be so very proud," in his most patronizing manner—he'd taken that a bit more personally. That sort of slight and attitude toward his profession was surely as outdated as Hopkiss' 'spit spot'…it was like Crevecoeur was trapped in the past.

"You're best talking to Ralph Grahame, my estate manager," Mortmaigne said when he finally understood what Hathaway was there for. "He organizes these open days—awful nuisances! But, still—noblesse oblige. He should be at Lodge Farm, if you can remember the way."

Hathaway could. But before he made it out of the house, Hopkiss had a shirt for him to wear in place of his soiled one. "You can't go around like that. Not on official business," he persisted, and in the end, Hathaway had changed and left his dirty shirt there to be washed, ironed, and sent on.

And then he made the surreal journey across the estate to Lodge Farm. Walking the paths he'd walked all those years ago, seeing again the Folly and the chapel and…all of it. So well-known at one time that he'd failed to take in its beauty, and now, seeing it with fresh eyes, it was eerily familiar and disconcerting unknown. He almost expected to hear his mother calling for him or to catch a glimpse of his father riding the horses out or inspecting the hedges…almost imagined he was walking back into time itself.

Inspector Lewis was making a rather unusual journey of his own back at the station…

"I'm not sure where Health and Safety stand on pets," Innocent told him when she caught sight of him carrying the cat in its pet carrier through the halls.

"Belonged to Dr. Black, Ma'am. I didn't like to leave it."

"That's what Animal Welfare's for."

"A lorryload of hens went over on the bypass," he explained. He shouldn't have, but he couldn't help adding, "Bit of a flap on, you might say."

Hooper walked down the hallway before Innocent had to come up with something to say to that. Lewis stopped him to ask, "James back yet?"

"He's still out at Crevecoeur Hall, boss…with some posh sort. One of the family, I think. She knew him anyway—at least that was the impression I had. Looked right at home, he did, hobnobbing with Lord and Lady Muck."

Innocent put a stop to all of that with, "Have you got a report on the shooting for me?" And that was just as well.

Hathaway was not out at the Hall hobnobbing with anyone. Instead he was trying to raise Father Jasper in the folly to no avail. Grahame had sent him that way for the spare chapel key, but it turned out the chapel was open anyway…the key in the lock and the visitors' book absent of any helpful "Dr. Stephen Black" entry for the day.

The chapel was unchanged through the years. He'd been christened here…brought into the Church; given a love of silences and the smell of old wooden pews; and his faith—the one some days he thought he'd lost and other days he knew was still with him very real and pressing…it had started here. And today…with the memories of that poor, little girl still eating away at him when he least expected it—he had other places to go along the tour bus route, other people to speak to, other things to do, but he stole a moment to sit in the chapel and let its quiet peace minister to his soul.

And there beside him sat a paper open to the day's crossword. Almost like a message sent from God, because on the top corner someone had written _TUDOR CR_ which surely meant Tudor Crescent where Black had lived, and when he got down to retrieve the pen that had fallen from the paper… there was the briefcase hidden under the pew…and when he slipped on his gloves and opened the case…there was the bloodstained, murder weapon. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find…*" came to mind. Those few minutes he'd stolen off the clock had more than paid off…

* Matthew 7:7


	7. Part Six

After he'd arrived and been briefed, Lewis peered at the key still in the lock and asked, "And the key was like this?"

"Page one, _Junior Detective's Manual_: don't touch anything," Hathaway quipped. Lewis gave him a look, but Hathaway thought all in all that was better than the disgruntled reply he would have liked to have made. Of course, he hadn't touched the key—or allowed anyone else to touch it either before Lewis arrived.

Hobson came to meet them with the bloody candlestick Hathaway had found.

"Is this the murder weapon?" Lewis asked her.

Hobson, being a pathologist and therefore cautious in making definite statements no matter how obvious they seemed, said, "Well…I'll need a match for blood and hair, but it's not inconsistent with the injuries caused."

Lewis looked about frowning as they discussed how the murder must have happened. "Anything taken?" he asked.

"Couldn't say," Hathaway answered.

"I thought you knew the place?" Lewis said, and then explained himself, "Hooper said."

"Did he?" Hathaway asked. He uncomfortably noticed Hobson still there with them, watching them both. All eyes and ears, he sometimes thought.

"Impression he got."

Hathaway was a private sort, almost awkwardly so. What harm could it cause to explain his familiarity with Crevecoeur to Lewis or Hobson? Better actually to inform his inspector of it now that the case had become linked to the estate for sure. Still, he was reluctant to do so…as though somehow it exposed a part of him that was best left hidden. Silly no doubt, but it took some effort to say what needed said.

"My father was the estate manager here…I lived here until I was twelve." After he'd said it, he wondered if he and Mortmaigne were that far removed from one another. Had his reluctance been not in exposing a part of himself but shame that his father had been a man like Ralph Grahame? A man who mucked out stables and said "Yes, My Lord" and jumped when another man called? Surely not…

"So, you know them then, up at the hall?" Lewis said after he and Hobson had exchanged looks that Hathaway didn't quite know how to interpret.

"Knew….sort of. I mean, me and some of the other kids off the estate used to play with the Mortmaignes."

Lewis laughed and said, "Never had you down as 'one of the kids off the estate'." Hathaway allowed himself a small laugh at that, too…but, well, there it was. He didn't like Lewis knowing that's all he'd been. One of the kids off the estate; not one of them 'up at the hall'. All his fancy learning, nice suits, and studied way of talking…his way of 'bettering' himself for all the good it had ever done him. Was he really that shallow? Well, he wouldn't be the first man and easier to believe that than that he really did have something buried in his past that was best kept there safe from Hobson's curious eyes or Lewis' inquisitive nature.

The pathologist and inspector could have asked a good deal about those years Hathaway had lived at Crevecoeur, but there was more than enough to be discovered about the murder of Dr. Black first. Like how, if Dr. Black had been killed there in the chapel, someone had carted his body half a mile in broad daylight in order to dump it on the tour bus.

Lewis and Hathaway left Hobson to her job and went off to see what light Father Jasper in the folly could shed on that. His view did overlook the chapel, but he'd been at prayers and such all morning and seen nothing; he knew the spare chapel key had been in its place 'yesterday? The day before, possibly?' which was next to no help. And as to having ever seen the man in the snap Lewis held up for him…no was his answer. Though it had been a tentative enough 'no' that Lewis asked again, it remained just that. No.

So, Lewis asked him, "If you could spare some time from your devotions to meditate on when you last saw the key?" and they left him to his prayers.

Hathaway briefly filled Lewis in on the details of the Mortmaignes: August, the present Marquess, Tygon the Twelfth…

"What does he do?" Lewis asked.

"Well, he's a marquess," Hathaway answered as though that was explanation enough, but he tacked on the information that up until the past year Augustus had also been the chair of the family bank which had turned turtle soon after Augustus had gotten out. In addition to Augustus there were his two children, Scarlett born to the Lord's deceased first wife, and Titus, born to his current wife, Selina.

"Not much chance of running into a Joan or a Doreen round Crevecoeur Hall, eh?" Lewis noted.

"Not above stairs, sir. No," Hathaway said and rang the bell for his old friend Paul Hopkiss. Hathaway hadn't thought to inform Lewis that Hopkiss had been one of the kids from the estate; Hopkiss, being his formal self, said nothing to tip the inspector off either. At Lewis' request, Hopkiss gathered the family for the police and stood patiently in the background ready to do whatever might be asked of him.

The Lady Mortmaigne was not terribly pleased to be bothered by the police. "Is this going to take long, gentlemen?" she asked. She clearly expected them to take the hint and ensure it did not.

Hathaway might have, though that was questionable, but Lewis…for all he sounded polite enough when he said, "I hope not, madam," wasn't to be rushed. He'd need their movements for their day—

"Good heavens, that sounds terribly sinister!" Selina cut in.

His Lordship looked confused and turned to Hathaway to ask, "James?" As though, he found the inspector incomprehensible and needed Hathaway to provide a translation. Hathaway explained they had reason to believe that a man had been killed on the estate that day.

"Very likely in your chapel," Lewis added.

"Surely, you don't imagine this man's death has anything to do with us?" Selina asked incredulously.

Lewis fell back to the fallback line of all investigative police, "It's purely procedural, but I would be grateful, sir, if you could give us a list of all your tenants…also any other members of staff who live out."

"Yes, of course," Mortmaigne agreed readily. "Hopkiss can provide you with all you need for the staff, and as for the tenants…Ralph Grahame—he'll tell you anything you need to know." (Only, of course, he wouldn't for he'd be dead before they caught him up.)

They split up to interview the family; Hathaway taking Selina Mortmaigne, and Lewis, Philip Coleman, the man who'd taken that shot at the reenactment…

Coleman, (Lieutenant Colonel, Oxford Rifles, retired) reminded Lewis of some posh detective on the telly he'd seen now again when there'd not been something of interest to watch (football, rugby, cricket, and the like) in the evenings. He seemed a nice enough chap and willing enough to give what help he could—he'd been pulled in at the last minute for the reenactment when Scarlet's fellow had dropped out; he'd been staying at Crevecoeur for the past six months; he was quite certain he'd never met Stephen Black…though a second look at the photo had him thinking that he might have _seen_ him a couple of weeks before…Hopkiss would know; he'd spoken to him.

Hopkiss, industriously ironing Hathaway's cleaned shirt, did remember speaking to Black…

"I was on my way back from the summer house, and I saw him crossing the lawn. So I stopped and asked him his business. I can't be a hundred per cent certain, but I think he said he was looking for Lodge Farm." As Lewis thanked him for his time, Hopkiss handed him the freshly pressed shirt and asked him to see that it made its way to Sergeant Hathaway.

Somewhat mystified, Lewis took the shirt and went off to learn what Hathaway had found out since he'd gone off with Her Ladyship. He ran into the pair of them only just returning from their walk. Considering that Lewis, who Morse had always thought a bit too chatty when it came to interviews, had managed to complete two interviews in the time it had taken Hathaway to do only the one, it would have been interesting to know just what the two of them had been talking about for so long.

But Lewis didn't ask, about that or about the shirt he handed to his sergeant saying, "Present from Mr. Hopkiss—I won't ask." Hathaway didn't bother to explain; he did, however, tell Lewis the gist of his interview with Selina—which amounted to pretty much nothing.

"What about the daughter, Scarlett?" Lewis asked.

And, here, Hathaway made the cardinal sin of a detective; he made an assumption and reported it as fact. "Arrived at the same time I did this afternoon," he said without considering that perhaps she'd already come and gone once or twice before that. "A flying visit, apparently. According to Selina she was dropping off place cards for her engagement…they're having a big do the day after tomorrow." And if there was the slightest hint in his tone or voice that he was reporting something that bothered him a great deal more than it should have, Lewis failed to pick up on it.

"So His Lordship said…"

"You don't think any of them are involved, do you?"

"We'll have a clearer idea once we find out a bit more about Dr. Black. Oh, did you get on to Frances Woodville?"

"Oh, sorry, sir. I haven't had a chance—" Hathaway began to apologize.

"No, no, it's all right," Lewis quickly assured him. And it was, but it wasn't usual for his sergeant to let things slide. Right on top of things was where Hathaway liked to be and almost always was. But, mindful still of Hobson's concerns, Lewis was quick to let it ride. "Not to worry. I'll track her down. You cut along."

"What about the estate manager?"

"Grahame. It's all right. I'll take it. You've had a long day," and maybe he shouldn't have said it, but he did, "court and so forth."

Hathaway instantly changed the 'But' he'd been about to voice into agreement; while Lewis…decided he should give it one more try with, "You know, James—" Finding themselves both talking at once, Lewis stumbled to a stop, and Hathaway immediately took the advantage. "I'll go, then, Sir, if there's nothing else," he said, eager to be away, to stop Lewis from saying whatever it was he'd been about to say.

Lewis took mercy on him, or maybe just took the easy way out, and said, "No, no—nothing else." And that had been it for the night. The inspector had found no one at home on Lodge Farm and called it a night.


	8. Part Seven

Hathaway, though—he hadn't gone along home as Lewis had intended, but back to the office where he'd been unable to keep himself from looking up a number and address for Scarlett Mortmaigne. But from there? She was engaged, she was…never going to be his—he was a fool to be sitting there trying to decide if he should give her a call when obviously he shouldn't. Besides being engaged, she was part of the investigation—he had no business concerning himself with her. None at all. So why didn't he just go home and play a few songs and get some sleep? Well, besides the obvious answer—he was completely smitten with Scarlett and would find sleep hard to come by regardless—there was the other thing…the nightmares that were sure to chase him through his sleep, those of a little girl crying for help and no one hearing.

Lewis had suffered a restless night himself over the Mary Lapsley case…

Morse did not take kindly to interference in a murder investigation; he was fuming when he handed Lewis the typed copy of the questionable diary entry.

"He said, actually said, Lewis, 'Frederick Redpath did not kill Mary Lapsley. If he had, I would have proved it.' Can you believe the arrogance? Can you?"

"No. Not really, Sir," Lewis said and having worked with Morse a good five years now that was saying something.

Morse made an exclamation of disgust. "Hillian and Dawson very emphatically discounted this when it came in five years after Mary's murder, and now, just like that, we're to assume it's legitimate and turn our eyes its way even though we've yet to eliminate Redpath or the writer!" He threw his copy down on top of his desk and shook his head. "Go home, Lewis. Go home, we're not doing any good here!"

So Lewis took his own copy and went home. He studied it that night, reading it over and over again as though by doing so he could make it read something other than an account of the senseless slaying of a little girl.

"What is it, Dad?" their Lyn, looking up from her comics and catching him looking at her one time too many, asked. "Is something wrong?"

"No, Pet. Nothing's wrong," he told her. He rose and kissed her forehead. "Off to bed, you," he ordered. After she'd gone, he checked the door though he knew he'd already locked it, and he peeked into both of his children's rooms to make sure they were safely tucked up in their beds before he crawled into his own and curled himself around his sleeping wife. He lay there a long time just holding her before he finally slept as well.

The mornings after the sergeants' restless nights didn't improve things for either of them: Ralph Grahame's daughter found him dead, and Morse's fears that too many cooks would spoil the soup proved well founded.

The briefing on that one sheet of paper and its 502 words was early that morning. Dawson was thorough enough, enumerating each point that he now thought salient though 13 years before he'd been willing enough to dismiss each one as invalid. The three different typewriters, naming the knife as Brier's though it was two days after the killing before the police knew whose it was; the 'nice, clean dress' that had actually been very dirty; the inference that someone knew what had happened and had kept quiet…none of it concrete, all of it clutching at straws as far as Lewis could see.

"All the same, I think we should take a look," Detective Chief Superintendent Strange decreed.

"Look where, Sir?" Morse demanded. "Where do we start?"

"Well, that's for you to decide, Morse," Strange said as though he hadn't just stepped on Morse's toes. "You're in charge of the investigation."

The entire thing left Morse in a right tizzy.

"Where do we start, Sir?" Lewis made the mistake of asking and got an earful for his troubles. "Hang on a minute. I'm as unhappy as you are about being bounced along this road. But we've got to start somewhere, Sir."

His words actually reached the chief inspector who answered, "Yes, you're right. I'm sorry." Shortly thereafter Morse was deciding, "We'd better go through the motions—with Redpath in hospital, we'd only be twiddling our thumbs anyway. See if you can track down the grandmother—if she's still alive. She lived on Fern Street."

"Small world, Sir. That's where Mitchell lives. The fellow that's building the fence for Hillian."

"Really? You'll know the way then, Lewis," Morse told him pointedly. Lewis nodded longsufferingly and headed off to Fern Street.

It was getting on in the afternoon before he could report his findings to the chief inspector.

"Where have you been?" he asked when Morse opened the door to his ring. He tried not to let his frustration show, but even he could hear it in his voice. "I waited at the office for ye."

"I needed to think," Morse said. (And Lewis could be excused for wondering, 'Oh, yeah? And where's your glass then?' for it had been Morse himself that had always told Lewis he did his thinking over a beer—well, failing that in his jag, and as Morse was standing in his own front hall…) "You're just in time to give me a hand."

"Doing what?" Lewis asked suspiciously. He'd wasted a good bit of his work day waiting at the office already, and it was a day he needed to be off at a decent hour for Val had decided it was time for him to take her out to a nice restaurant. Something he might have been able to wriggle out of if Morse had acted at all interested in doing anything more than going through the motions for the next day or two. Since he hadn't, Lewis had already called home and told his wife their evening out was on. She'd sounded that pleased, and regardless that he'd rather be out investigating with Morse than taking his chances with whatever exotic (for Lewis anything not fried and served with either a heaping pile of chips or a buttery, baked potato) foods Val had a hankering to try, he wouldn't be calling and telling her he had to work after all.

But it was only a spot of drying up that Morse needed doing before they could get on with their day. A bit more drying up than Lewis would have expected for the one man living on his own.

"Have you had folk in or something?" he asked as he took a wet plate from Morse and set to.

"No, these are cumulative, Lewis. So what's new?"

"Well, the grandmother's still with us. She's in a nursing home. I got the address off the bloke that's living in her old house. And guess who's living next door?"

"The Mitchells."

"Yeah, I went by there first. There was no answer, but I got the impression there was someone there.'' (There was just as Father Jasper had been in the Folly when Hathaway came calling for the spare chapel key…just one more similarity between the cases, albeit a very small one.) Morse didn't say anything to that. He did frown at Lewis and move the pile of dishes Lewis had been making on the counter behind them to another spot. As though Lewis would know where Morse kept his dishes…he had trouble enough keeping track of where Val had decided to shift theirs to every time he turned around. She was always moving things around or redoing rooms, and he was forever searching for the sugar bowl and what have you. "So, how's your day?"

Morse quickly filled him on the fact that Redpath had claimed to ask John and Terrence Mitchell about his knife the day he'd lost it. They quite possibly would have known whose knife it was that killed little Mary. Only why hadn't Dawson mentioned it?

"It didn't lead to anything at the time and didn't seem important?" Lewis guessed.

Morse frowned. "Maybe," he said. "What about the father, John Mitchell?"

"Walked out on them. Are we still going through the motions, Sir? Or do I detect a glimmer of interest?"

Morse ignored Lewis' smirk, handed him another plate, and said, "Dry up, Lewis." Lewis did, and soon enough they were in the Jag on the way to visit the grandmother. She was a nice, old lady, seeing to it that Lewis got a nice cup of tea and willingly answering all their questions—well, except when it came to the name of Mary's father. That was something she wasn't about to give up though she admitted her daughter Ruth had kept in contact with Mary's father until she'd become ill. Mrs. Lapsley was also hesitant to let Morse borrow the picture of Mary and Ruth she had sitting out.

"I don't see what for. They never asked for it when Mary was killed," she protested. "Why do you want it now?"

"Different policemen have different ideas, Mrs. Lapsley," Morse explained, and she reluctantly let him take the picture with them when they left.

"Tell me what you see, Lewis. Stick to the foreground." Morse told him handing him the photo as he drove them back to town.

"There's the mother, the child…picnic basket."

"Everything."

"The mother's handbag. The little girl's sitting on a jacket…a man's jacket?"

"What man?"

"The father?"

"More than likely. Now, tell me, Lewis, who are the first people you'd want to interview in a child murder?"

"Well, the parents, Sir. Brothers and sisters…if there were any."

Morse nodded his approval. "And, yet," he said, "Hillian and Dawson showed no interest in that photograph."

"Maybe they weren't as observant as we two," Lewis said. He removed the old snap from the frame and read the faded writing on the back. Blackpool, 1969.

"We three, Lewis. Mrs. Lapsley could see its significance. That why she wasn't too keen on letting us have it."

You don't suspect her of anything, surely?"

"Only of trying to keep her daughter's secrets. " The specialist at the photo lab took a quick look at the photo and thought he might just be able to reveal one or two of those secrets if they gave him until the morning. Morse was only too keen to let him have a go. And then it was time for Lewis to gan off home and make his wife happy.


	9. Part Eight

Morning didn't see Hathaway dealing with a disgruntled boss but a crying teenage girl. Unlike Lewis with his "hold on a minute" to Morse, Hathaway had no way to improve the way things were going. Briony Grahame's father was dead, she was alone in the world, and no 'hold on a minute' was going to change that. He got what he could from Briony and left her to the constable as quickly as he could without making things worse than they were.

Outside he found DCS Innocent had arrived on scene—and what had brought her out? The death of an estate manager wouldn't have been enough to warrant her presence…but two deaths in a matter of days at a place like Crevecoeur certainly might have done.

Hathaway nodded a greeting to Innocent and handed Lewis one of the crime scene suits he'd picked up on his way past Forensics. "From all I've been able to get out of her, Titus dropped her off around midnight….she assumed her father had gone to bed, so she did the same herself," he reported.

"Just her, is it?" Innocent asked. "No brothers or sisters?"

"Just her," he confirmed. "The mother walked out on them nine years ago without a by-your-leave. Came back one day, she'd just cleared out."

"Hard on the girl, I suppose," Innocent noted.

Hard on the girl…yes, he'd certainly expect so, Hathaway thought. "I wouldn't have thought there was any suppose about it…" he spit out. At Lewis' warning look he quickly tacked on a 'Ma'am', but he had both the chief superintendent and the inspector throwing him concerned looks over that.

Titus, the son and heir of the Mortmaigne estate, pulled up on his motorbike outside the police circle.

"Go and see what he wants," Lewis directed Hathaway. The sergeant knew he was being sent away and didn't appreciate it one bit. He all but threw his scene suit in Lewis' face and stalked off.

Behind him, Lewis tried to excuse his sergeant's rudeness to their boss, "Been working him a bit hard, Ma'am…"

His effort wasn't really necessary; Innocent might have made the drive out to the estate over two deaths on a very prominent bit of real estate, but she'd also come to check up on the young Hathaway.

"This Zelinsky business can't have helped," she said.

Lewis clicked his tongue quietly and said, "I don't…suppose so. No, Ma'am." With a look Innocent warned him to keep an eye on his sergeant and left him to get on with his investigation.

Lewis and Hathaway donned their blue, crime scene suits, ducked under the tape, dodged SOCO, and arrived finally at the body.

"Suicide?" Lewis asked Dr. Hobson who was kneeling beside it taking temperature readings. Hathaway wasn't the only one having a bad morning as she quickly let them know.

'''Good morning' wouldn't go amiss," she said in place of an answer.

Suitably chastised, or wise enough to know he'd better if he wanted his report, Lewis said, "Sorry."

The doctor was not mollified. Still frowning she said, "I should think so…I'm a game girl, but picking through brain and bone before breakfast I call above and beyond." Since that was the job she'd signed up for—though who knew why anyone would want it—neither of the detectives felt all that sorry for her. Missing their telling look above her head, she went on, "But, yes, nothing to say otherwise. A preliminary swab for gunpowder residue suggests he'd recently discharged a firearm."

"Don't suppose he left a note?" Lewis said and wondered if that 'suppose' would get him in trouble one way or another, but it passed unnoticed.

"Well, nothing in his pockets. Time of death…an hour or two before ten pm? If that helps." She'd stood up by then, and perhaps her morning coffee had started to kick in for she'd lost a lot of her surliness as well. Lewis leaned against the hay and relaxed a bit. Hathaway had gone off on a long-legged prowl of the barn, and Lewis had a moment before it would be time to hit the day running. She was still sharp, still that quick, but no longer aimed at him.

"Well," he said, "I called in here about eight…couldn't raise anyone, so…" Hathaway came back then, and it was time to move on. "When you've finished here, I'd like all the rest of the estate swabbed," Lewis told Hobson as they were leaving.

He could tell by the look on her face that she had something to say about that, but Hathaway saved her the trouble. "It's a working estate, Sir. Likely as not, as least half the subjects will test positive."

"Well," Lewis said unperturbed by either of their protests, "that would rule out the other half, wouldn't it?" He nodded to Hobson and headed back to speak to the girl.

"I wouldn't read too much into the absence of a 'goodbye, cruel world," Sir," Hathaway told him on the way. "Statistically, the incidence of suicide notes in Grahame's demographic is in the twelve to twenty per cent range."

Lewis looked at him and said, "Where do you get this stuff?"

"The back of cereal boxes…" was his less-than-serious sounding answer. Lewis couldn't be sure if he was being facetious or not…Morse had claimed to get that bit about suicides and glasses off the back of a matchbook, and he'd sounded more than serious.*

"Some days I'm grateful you're on our side," Lewis said and left it at that.

The hurt in the room was almost palpable as they talked to young Briony. She fought down tears and avoided looking at them for the most part. Lewis would have liked to gather her up in a comforting hug and tell her everything would be all right; Hathaway would have liked to have been anywhere else doing just about anything else. But, both of the men stayed where they were—just as Hobson had signed up for a job that occasionally had her digging through blood and bone before breakfast, they'd signed up for one that was at times excruciatingly painful.

Lewis spoke in his quiet, gentle way asking things that sixteen-year-old girls shouldn't have to answer…

"How had your dad been recently? Nothing worrying him or I don't know…financial troubles?"

Her aloneness ate into Hathaway. He cut into Lewis' questions to ask his own, "Is there anyone I can contact for you? An aunt? Uncle? Grandparents? Anyone I can notify? A school?" But there had only been the two of them and she was waiting to hear back on a place at music college.

"That your thing, is it? Music?" Lewis asked and something about the question almost brought the tears she was so desperately fighting.

"My mum put me to when I was little. We didn't have a piano then, but His Lordship let me practice on the one in the summer house," she managed to tell them.

"That's good of him," Lewis said.

"Yeah. He's been very kind since Mum…she used to take me down there a couple times a week," Briony said the unshed tears thick in her throat. It was almost as though she was mourning her mother who'd been gone so long instead of the father she'd only just lost.

"How old were you when she left?" Lewis asked.

"It was just before my seventh birthday," Briony answered and began crying in earnest.

Her tears brought Lewis squatting at her knees, he took her hands to comfort her, she jerked away, and there they were. Long, red scratches up both her arms.

"What have you done to yourself?" he asked, gently and without accusation because it was all too obvious.

"It's nothing," the girl cried. Lewis looked to Hathaway for help, but Hathaway was standing, saying a hurried 'excuse me', and all but running from the room.

Lewis turned back to the girl. "All right," he said. "…we just need to clean this up a bit. All right?" He motioned the PC assigned to stay with Briony until social services arrived forward and left the girl in her able care. Then he went looking for his sergeant. He found him chewing out DC Hooper…

"The girl is sixteen years old," Hathaway was all but yelling into Hooper's face. "Whatever her mother's fall out with Grahame was about, she has a duty to her. Find her. Make that clear." Before Lewis reached them, the sergeant stalked off.

Hooper, not particularly phased by Hathaway's anger, asked Lewis, "What's bitten His Holiness' backside?"

Lewis, with the troubled girl and the obviously upset sergeant both to deal with, was in no mood for Hooper. "Same thing as will bite yours if you don't step to," he said to Hooper as he hurried after Hathaway. "Hey," he called after him.

Hathaway turned his way and angrily asked, "You do realize what's going on there?"

"Yeah, I have got eyes. But it's not an excuse for you to go dishing it out to the troops…now, come on what's up?"

"I'm fine," Hathaway said. It sounded not unlike Briony's 'It's nothing'. "Really," Hathaway said and walked off leaving Lewis to go back into Briony on his own—which all things considered was probably for the best. There was little left to ask the girl that Lewis judged wouldn't wait until she wasn't quite so raw; he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and headed toward the Hall.

Along the way, he looked into the chapel and found his sergeant sitting with his head bowed in one of the wooden pews. Lewis sighed and took a seat beside him. Hathaway turned his head to look at him, and Lewis raised his eyes a bit in acknowledgment. They sat there a moment, but only for a moment. Churches had never been Lewis' thing and there was work to be done.

He rubbed a finger under his eye, sniffed, reached out and patted Hathaway's shoulder, and said, "Thought I'd have a word with the Mortmaignes; see if you can get anything useful from Mr. Hopkiss, will you?" Hathaway nodded his assent, and Lewis left him sitting there.

The interview with the Mortmaignes and Philip Coleman was unfruitful—they were shocked and saddened and full of gossip that Mrs. Grahame had scarpered off with one of the labourers who'd been about at the time working on the Millennium Grant Project. Nine years on, that hardly seemed relevant.

Hathaway, too, found his interview with Paul Hopkiss filling in more about Linda Graham than about her husband…and all with the formal 'sir' tacked on at every opportunity.

"There's really no need to call me 'sir', Paul," Hathaway finally told his old friend, but Hopkiss felt it inappropriate to 'presume to familiarity on the basis of a childhood association'.

"Do you think back much, sir, to those days?" Hopkiss asked.

"It was a long time ago," Hathaway told him. He hadn't realized how much he had forgotten of his time at Crevecoeur until he'd arrived and every time he turned around he was reminded of something else he hadn't thought of in years. Paul had mentioned how they'd played hide and seek in and out of all the old sheds and barns, and Hathaway might have joined him in his reminisces if not for that; he'd just come from the body of Ralph Grahame lying in the main barn where they'd played away a good many afternoons.

"Yes, but happy days," Paul said, "as I remember them." He opened the door for Hathaway, and they nodded their farewells.

The next stop for Hathaway was Lonsdale College where he had an appointment with Professor Pelham, the art fellow who'd been out at Crevecoeur the day Dr. Black had been killed. After that, he helped Lewis rummage through the piles of papers and books filling Black's flat.

"What are we looking for exactly?" he asked.

"Anything that links Black with Ralph Grahame," Lewis said. Within minutes, Hathaway had not only briefed Lewis on his interview with Professor Pelham, but also found just what Lewis had asked for…

"We found a bunch of letters at Dr. Black's home. Love letters…appear to be from Linda Graham," the inspector informed DCS Innocent later.

"Appear?" she asked looking them over.

"Well, we don't have any writing to compare them with, but there were some snaps of her in with them. Including one with Briony," he answered.

She looked at the photos and said, "So, what's the theory: Grahame tracks down the man his wife ran off with, gets him to Crevecoeur Hall on some pretext or other, kills him, and then does himself in before you can put two and two?" She could read Lewis' reservations on his face. "What?"

"Well…I don't know, Ma'am…just seems too neat, almost. You know?"

"Murder and suicide? It's not uncommon."

"No...no. I suppose not."

"So that's that then," she pronounced as though both cases were as good as closed. The inspector was not so quick to jump to that conclusion.

*_ Service of All the Dead _Inspector Morse…again


	10. Part Nine

Lewis' meeting with Frances Woodville, who he'd finally tracked down, was an interesting one. A lecturer at Black's college, she seemed truly sorry to hear of Black's death at the same time she wasn't shy about admitting they'd had their moments. (Actually, she wasn't shy about much, including the fact that she rather liked Lewis' company.)

"He 'borrowed' much of the work which underpinned my doctorate to secure the Commonwealth Chair," she told Lewis not without a good deal of humour even though she couldn't have been all too pleased with the good Dr. Black.

"That's against the rules, isn't it?' Lewis asked playing along with her.

"Have you been in Oxford long? Stand us a pint and I'll give you the grizzly," she said with an inviting smile.

After he'd paid for their beers and she'd had her first long swallow, she said, "All right, what was Stephen like? Well, that would depend on whether you mean before or after the accident." She then proceeded to tell him about the night six years before when Black had accidentally ran into and killed Freddie Randall, a student who'd had a good deal too much to drink. "The lad just stepped out in front of the car…nothing Stephen could have done, but he vowed never to get behind the wheel again. That's when he really starting putting it away. Terrible to watch a brilliant man fall apart so completely." Lewis, who'd really started putting it away and kept at it for far too long after his wife had died, nodded his head and drank his beer without comment.

She had a good deal more to say. Fond of a bit of cloak and dagger, Black had been intrigued with the alleged king's ransom once entrusted to the Mortmaignes by King Charles way back when…

"Why do I get the feeling there's a 'however coming'?" Lewis asked.

"Because," she said with a smile, "I suspect you're smarter than you look…it's a compliment."

"Aye—backhanded!" he said. She laughed and went on to tell him that the legend had it that Mortmaigne had stolen the treasure and hidden it somewhere on the estate.

While Lewis was entertaining Frances Woodville, his sergeant was running pell-mell into trouble (or as it turned out, trouble was running after him and all too easily overtaking him)…

Hathaway was surprised when he rounded the corner of the small bookshop and found himself not three feet away from Scarlett Mortmaigne.

"I'm…uh…not following you. Honestly," he told her. Though…well, he might not have been following her but the bookshop was within walking distance of her flat—he'd been…interested in seeing her neighborhood, in seeing where she lived. Stupid really…

Turning to him, she smiled and said, "You don't have to deny it quite so vehemently. What are you…?"

"Me? Um…_Blood Patterning_," he said and held the book up so she could see the garishly gruesome cover. "And you?" She held hers up, and he read the cover with a frown of recognition. "Housman?"

"I mislaid my copy…you know how one sometimes has a hankering? I couldn't remember whether it was 'Happy highways where I walked', or 'went'."

"Went, definitely, went," he said with certainty because she'd gotten hung up there over and over again back when she'd been learning that piece for a school program and he'd been pressed into being her study partner.

She looked at him intently and said, "Silly, I know, but suddenly it seemed the most important thing in the world to me that I knew." His heart skipped a beat at that because surely that meant…well.

"So…how are you?" he asked because he needed something to say instead of leaning down and kissing her as he was very much tempted to do.

She laughed. "Since yesterday?"

"Well, it's not been the most uneventful twenty-four hours. Last thing you need, what with the engagement coming up." A reminder to them both that things weren't as simple as they'd seemed back when they were young.

She sobered and asked, "Is there any news as to why he did it? I don't suppose you can say?"

"No. We're still working on it."

"Of course," she said and then seemed to realize that they'd been standing there a bit too long. They said an awkward good bye, and if he hadn't glanced down and seen she'd left her charge card on the counter things might not have gone the way they did.

He snatched it up and went running out of the shop after her. She thanked him when he handed her the card and then said, "I thought for a moment that you'd chased after me to declare your undying love."

"Not sure men do that nowadays, do they?" he asked. He was trying hard to appear nonchalant, but if he ever was to run after a woman and declare his undying love…it would be to her.

"Perhaps they should," she said, and he wished she'd dropped her veiled words and let him do the same. And then she did. "Take me out somewhere…tonight. Anywhere—I don't care."

He swallowed hard and said, "Is that wise?"

"I don't want to be wise. I want to be happy. I want to drink too much and laugh too much, and…" She sighed and let that go unsaid. "Please?" she asked, and for all he knew better, he couldn't tell her no.

There was the rest of the day to get through first. Meeting up with Lewis to find to his frustration that Lewis wasn't ready to close the case but was still actively ferretting away.

"I thought we were done with this," he told the inspector. "Grahame kills Black for running off with his wife, then does himself in in a fit of remorse—that's the official version, isn't it?"

Lewis shook his head and said, "Leaving little Briony to fend for herself? He was a devoted dad by all accounts—it doesn't sit right."

"Balance of his mind."

"Well, you saw him yesterday…how did the balance of his mind seem then?" Lewis asked and left without waiting for an answer. His sergeant watched him go feeling that Grahame's state of mind had been much more balanced and steady than his own was at the moment. What was he doing agreeing to take Scarlett out that night? It had been madness before he'd known Lewis wasn't signing off on the case; beyond that now.

But, even as he thought it, he was working out just where he'd take her. Even when he did as Lewis asked and looked into the files for the details of Freddie Randall's death, he'd been thinking of her. But, even with only half of his mind on the job, he couldn't miss the bombshell he found in the report. And it was enough to keep his mind on the job for the rest of the day.

"You were with Freddie Randall on the night he died, Father," Lewis accused as soon as they arrived to find the priest preparing the sacraments in the chapel. "You gave evidence at the inquest. The man who was murdered here, in this very chapel, yesterday, was Stephen Black. Anything you'd like to tell us about that?"

The father looked suitably chastised. "What happened to Freddie was an accident," he explained. "We were just messing about—the way you do if you've had too much to drink…he pushed me. I pushed him back…if I hold anyone to blame for Freddie's death, it's myself. Not Stephen Black."

For a defense, it was a rather good one, but Lewis wasn't sure he was buying even the same. "He just happens to be in religious retreat in the exact place where the man who ran his friend down is murdered. Quite a coincidence!"

"Remind me again, what is it you've got against the Grahame scenario?" his sergeant asked because the sooner the case was closed the better as far as he was concerned. But for all his asking, he wasn't really listening. He shook Lewis loose as soon as he could and hurried off as to not be late to his date with trouble.


	11. Part Ten

That evening with Scarlett…it was everything he had hoped. And that was even more painful than he had imagined. She wasn't his and would never be, but…'the heart chooses' he'd quoted to Lewis when he'd wondered about Linda Grahame running off with someone like Stephen Black, and Hathaway's heart was leading him down a very slippery slope.

"There has to be forgiveness, doesn't there? Second chance?" Scarlett asked after speaking of her annulment.

"Oh, I can't imagine you have done anything that requires absolution," he told her.

"How do you know? I might be terribly wicked," she said and like the question before she'd hidden her deadly seriousness behind a light tone, and it was only in hindsight the conversation became tragic.

"Are you?"

"More than you can possibly imagine…" All with a smile, everything hidden behind the guise of light-hearted banter…but there had been nothing truly light-hearted about that night.

"We got married…do you remember?" she asked him at one point. "I was about eight."

"The Danver sisters were bridesmaids and Hopkiss walked you down the aisle," he remembered.

"Yes…that's right. I'd forgotten that."

"What happened to his stammer—I meant to ask."

"Hmmm….Daddy sent him to get it fixed, I think."

"Nice of him."

"Yes, he's always tried to look after his staff when he can…Why didn't you come back?"

"I don't know," he said shaking his head. "You know…um…life? Stuff happens I suppose."

"That last morning you were at Crevecoeur, we threw a penny into the fountain and made a wish…I always thought you would come back." And had that been her wish that morning? He'd wished…well, wishes didn't always happen overnight, did they? "Hoped, I suppose," she went on. "Did…you think of us ever."

"You, often," he answered.

After a moment, she said, "Well…the fountain's gone, I'm afraid. So, I suppose all those wishes are rendered null and void." He looked into her eyes and hoped not.

And while he was gazing into her eyes and careening full speed ahead down his slippery slope, Lewis was staring at Black's notes and reading materials while Black's cat made himself at home and helped himself to Lewis' tea.

"So, why did you become a policeman?" Scarlett asked Lewis' sergeant as Lewis found what he guessed to be a treasure map to the Mortmaigne treasure.

"I don't know," Hathaway said.

She smiled and said, "I think I do. I think something in you wants to save people."

"I wouldn't say that…we just pick up the pieces and try to put them back together again."

"Like Humpty?" she said and they both laughed. But she wasn't laughing when she asked, "How will you put Briony back together again?"

"We find out why and how her father died…it's the not knowing that eats people." And that led very nicely into her asking if they knew why Grahame had killed himself. And Hathaway didn't hesitate to tell her.

"Really?" she asked. "What makes you think that—well, you probably can't talk about this with me. Aren't there rules about…oh, I don't know, consorting with the enemy or suspects of some such?"

"Is that what we're doing?" he said sotto voce.

She laughed but said, "I'm serious. I wouldn't want you to get into trouble or compromise your integrity."

"Probably a bit late for that," he told.

"I bet you say that to all the girls—"

"I don't, actually…point of fact, I don't do any of this." They'd both grown quieter through the evening, and both drank a bit more than was probably wise. And the wine seemed to be making her tired while it made him…well, he was slowly heading into a much darker place than he'd sailed earlier in the evening.

"Then what do you do?

"Work," he told her. And then he told her about the girl and Zelinsky, "For four days we questioned him; for four days walking around in the mind of this…well, what's the point?"

She covered his hand with her own and asked, "Are you lonely?"

His voice was hushed when he answered, "I hadn't thought so." But that was all changed now.

The night was chillier than the day before it as he walked her to her flat.

"Will you come in?" she asked.

He took her hand and tried to be the sort of man he wanted to be. "You're um…you're getting married. Do you love him?" Her lack of an answer spoke for itself. "Why, then?"

"You wouldn't understand," she said and kissed his cheek. "I'm so sorry."

She began to walk to her door but he called her name and she turned and said, "He's rich…we didn't come out of Daddy's bank going under as unscathed as people like to think. Tarek's father helped out—financially…there was an understanding. There, now you can hate me."

"Don't do it."

"I don't have a choice."

"You do."

"Don't get tangled up with us, James! Me and the rest of my family. I mean it, turn your back and run, for your own sake." With that she turned her back on him and began to unlock her door. He didn't take her warning seriously, of course, but she was right, for any number of reasons: the fiancé, the differences in their backgrounds and expectations, the investigation, the fact that he was emotionally vulnerable coming out of the Zelinsky trial, a hundred more probably.

He should have let her go, but…instead he quoted that poem and that was both of their undoing.


	12. Part Eleven

In contrast to Hathaway's night out, Lewis' with Val was straightforward without any ulterior motives, hidden agendas, or quoting of obscure poetry.

The evening was a success for both Lewis and the photo specialist. Val thoroughly enjoyed their night out, and the specialist managed to uncover two leads that might prove useful: a lapel badge of some sort and a partly visible tailor's label that sent them off to St. Giles in search of a tailor's shop. That lead wasn't much help as it turned out…the tailor's shop had long since been bought out and transformed into a wine bar. They'd gone on in, hoping to find someone who knew something, but…

"It just had to be better as a tailor's," Morse said.

"Oh," Lewis said looking about them and not quite managing to hide his smile, "I think it's quite nice myself. Of course, it not being a tailor's shop any more rather stitches up our inquiry."

Morse made a pained face and said, "Please, Lewis." (As eighteen years later, Innocent might easily have done to his 'flap on' comment if Hooper hadn't saved him.)

"Sorry," Lewis said. He fought down his laughter and said, "I was thinking…Redpath was persecuted for five years after the murder?"

"Yes?"

"Well, it's five years after the murder that the diary showed up."

"Go on," Morse told him, but…

"Well, that's it, really." He knew it all should mean something, but what?

"This is the last day we'll concern ourselves with the diary, Lewis, which gives you until tomorrow to come up with something a bit more enticing than that." They wouldn't need the whole day though, as it turned out. Morse learned all he wanted to know long before night had fallen—more than he wanted to know; and Lewis learned far more than Morse would have had him know as well.

From Mrs. Lapsley, Morse learned that Terrence Mitchell had had a breakdown and been temporally committed when he was twenty. And before that his father had kept him a prisoner in his own house and, according to neighbourhood gossip, knocked him about. And then, after the boy had been committed, the father had just left the boy and his mother one day without a word. Like Lewis in the wine bar, Morse knew it all should mean something, but before he could think it through Mrs. Lapsley turned the entire investigation on its ear.

There were the postcards her daughter had sent back from the holidays she'd gone on with Mary's father. All date stamped with the names of places where the police association had held their yearly conferences through the years when Morse had been young and idealistic enough to care for such things. And there was the badge. The badge that matched the one he had at his own drawer at home. The one from the police conference in Blackpool in 1969.

With a heavy heart, he called Lewis and had him do a bit of checking up and then meet him out at the lake where he'd found little Mary all those years before. Morse arrived there first. He stood staring into the quiet waters of the lake trying to avoid putting all the pieces together and having to acknowledge where he already _knew _they were leading. Lewis, when he arrived, was understandably taken with the beauty of the lake; Morse couldn't see it. Not that day with the thought of that badge drumming its warning through him; not that bit of the lake with the boathouse standing so near _ever_.

The quietness of the empty boathouse was almost painful. There was only their own shuffling steps and the lapping of the water. For an imaginative mind like Lewis' it was all too painfully easy to picture the 18-year-old crime scene and a young Morse hopefully searching for a missing eight-year-old girl and finding a body instead.

His earlier appreciation for the beauty of their surroundings long gone, he sniffed quietly and said, "I suppose you can get used to most things…but not that…not a kiddy." It was rare, that. Being afforded a glimpse into the demons that tormented Morse and being allowed to…not comfort exactly, but…offer just a bit of common human understanding, maybe. Whatever it was, it was rare for Morse to allow him to get that close. But there in the boathouse that seemed to still echo with the pain of that long ago night, Morse didn't correct him or shush him or push him away, or…anything. Instead, he nodded and let the truth of Lewis' words stand for them both.

Eventually, Morse said, "John Mitchell drove his son to a breakdown. Hardly let him out of the house. And then walked out on both of them. And it all happened five years after this…"

"Go on," Lewis said.

Morse gave him a weak smile and said, "Touché, Lewis." The quiet in the boathouse settled back over them. Lewis thought Morse had become lost in the memory of finding little Mary, and perhaps he had. (Though, perhaps, he'd been thinking instead of that badge and their investigation and what it all meant. Either way, they hadn't been good thoughts into which to disappear.) Lewis would have liked to shake him out of them, but he didn't know how. So he stood there, his hands in his pockets, and tried to keep his imagination from getting away from him.

Finally, Morse shook his thoughts away himself, patted Lewis on the arm, and led the way out of that place of sorrow.

They followed John Mitchell's trail from the employment office to the cleaning company where Mitchell had worked nights, cleaning offices full of typewriters, including one in Reading.

"That's it, Sir! It all adds up!" Lewis said. And it did. Mitchell had typed the diary entry, posted it in Reading…

"We've only got to go back to the employment people and get them to trace him," he concluded ready to hop in the car and do just that.

To his surprise, Morse was not nearly as excited as Lewis. He was, in fact, not excited at all. "We're going back to the office, Lewis."

Lewis came to a standstill, "But…but we could trace him!"

"I said the office!" Morse said in his sternest voice because how could he tell the sergeant they were playing around with an unexploded bomb?

"If we don't put a trace on Mitchell, it'll be gross negligence," Lewis said because he couldn't believe what was happening. Morse could have told him, if he had the stomach to put the whole sordid mess into words, and if he was willing to put his sergeant's career on the chopping block right beside his own. He wasn't; he turned his back on Lewis and left him standing there while he climbed into the car and shut the door. Through the mirror, he could see his sergeant shaking his head in bewilderment and hurt before finally climbing into the car beside him.

"Sir?" Lewis said plaintively when they came to the turn that would have brought them to the employment office, but Morse tightened his grip on the steering wheel and kept right on going. Lewis shook his head and stared out the window, and Morse left him to his thoughts. His own mind was working overtime trying to see his way clear—their way clear because whatever happened, he would have to make sure Lewis was safely away.

And that was harder than it might have been, because his sergeant was a better man than most.

"You're questioning my judgment, Lewis. I can't have that," he told Lewis once they were back in the office.

"You what?" Lewis asked, and even after the terse ride there, he didn't really believe he could have heard Morse right. "Are you serious?"

"You're owed some leave. Am I right?" Morse asked. He kept his face carefully averted from Lewis sitting at his desk with his children's colourings behind him on the wall. Morse didn't need the reminders to know what he was doing was necessary for all it hurt.

"Yes," Lewis said. That yes carried with it a heaviness that told Morse Lewis was quickly coming to the horrible realization that his boss had feet of clay. And Morse hated that. Somehow, over their years together, he'd come to depend on not only Lewis' dependability, loyalty, and work ethic; but also his respect and admiration. It mattered to Morse what Lewis thought of him. More than Morse thought it should, but he did. And now he was going to have to let Lewis think the worst of him. There was no other way as far as he could see.

"Then I'd like you to take it."

"Leave? Have you gone mad? We're getting close—to the girl's killer, and maybe to Hillian's."

"You don't know what you're talking about, Sergeant," Morse said quietly with as much certainty as he could muster though unfortunately Lewis did—and didn't.

"I think I do. I think John Mitchell did find Redpath's knife. And he used it to kill the girl. His family found out and kept quiet. But for how long?" Lewis was off on a roll, and even Morse's stiff back couldn't slow him down when he got going. He left his desk to come stand at the window beside the one at which Morse stood. "Maybe he could be sure about his wife, but not the son. That's why he kept him at home. But he maltreats him. The lad winds up in an institution. A place where he might say anything. So then Mitchell sends this diary to the police, hoping to make us believe the killer's dead or dying. Anything the son says then can be dismissed as lunatic ravings. Only Hillian didn't buy the diary as being genuine…so Mitchell takes off, never to be seen again, except by Hillian…maybe on the night he died. Well, he'd be a lot more anxious about Hillian's book than Redpath."

"And how long has it taken you to get there, Lewis?" Morse asked. He'd given Lewis that one more day to concern himself with the diary, and if he could he would have relived that day making sure he kept Lewis far away from anything even remotely connected with Charlie Hillian or Mary Lapsley.

"A couple of days. Since we got the diary…I don't believe this. You're jealous, aren't you? You can't stand the idea of Dawson being right. He's proved his point about the diary, and you can't stomach it!"

He couldn't blame Lewis for reaching that conclusion…he'd given him nothing else with which to work. Still, that didn't stop it from stinging. With no heat, no answering anger, Morse ordered, "Take your leave, Sergeant."


	13. Part Twelve

Eighteen years later, Lewis would resort to the leave trick himself. Not really surprising that: monkey see, monkey do…

The day started out well enough for Lewis. He hightailed it over to Frances Woodville's to see if she wouldn't take a crack at Black's treasure map.

"What's it worth?" she asked.

"My undying gratitude," he offered.

"Does that include dinner?" she countered, flashed that inviting smile of hers, and set to.

Hathaway's morning was more difficult; he'd taken one of Linda Grahame's love letters to Briony to see if she could recognize her mother's handwriting. But the girl could be no help there.

"Will I have to stay here much longer?" she asked him. Hathaway couldn't say. The Mortmaignes had been allowed to bring her to the hall, but other arrangements were doubtlessly in the works.

"Are you unhappy here?" he asked because he'd seen her arms, and he knew someone needed to be asking. "If there's anything you want to talk to me about—" At that moment, Hopkiss barged in with a tea tray.

"Lady Mortmaigne thought you might care for some refreshments, sir—"

Biting back his anger, Hathaway spit out, "I'd be grateful if you'd see to it that we're not disturbed further." But the moment, if there had been one, when she might have told him what the cutting was all about was lost.

Hathaway was less than satisfied as he left just in time to run into Scarlett on the arm of her intended. A bit awkward that, to shake hands and say 'how do you do' to the man, but he managed it. Then Mortmaigne hurriedly showed him out.

"Come along now, James. We mustn't keep you from your duties. Dear boy, I'm so sorry, but, well, time and a place for everything, isn't there?" And it was obvious for Lord Mortmaigne the place for the police was not in his home making themselves known to his guests. "We wouldn't want to cast a cloud on Scarlett's happy day, would we?" It was fair to say that Hathaway would have loved to not only cast a cloud but rained on the parade as well, but he didn't tell His Lordship that. "No, of course not. Knew you'd understand. Good man." Mortmaigne patted Hathaway enthusiastically on the arm and went back to his guests. The good man shook his head after him and went to meet up with Lewis once again.

Lewis' theory about the treasure was perhaps the most ridiculous Hathaway had ever heard.

"Oh, come on. You're not serious? That's just a story they tell to tourists to keep them coming back," he protested.

"Stephen Black didn't think so…"

"What you think he found the treasure?"

"I think he died for it." They went then to visit Professor Pelham and take a look at the painting Dr. Black had hoped to see. It was the one with the later additions added to the composition.

"The folly, of course," Pelham said, "and one or two more…there's the hayrick on the far left and the bare oak…"

"It's a visual joke, Sir," Hathaway explained, "summer and winter at the same time." The sergeant and the professor exchanged self-satisfied grins over their cleverness in seeing the joke.

"Hilarious," Lewis muttered without joining them. Academics—wouldn't know a joke if they… "Does this look right to you," he asked pointing to the corner of the painting. "The sundial there? I mean you've got the candle over here on the left…so you'd expect any shadow to fall to the right, wouldn't you?" The professor and the sergeant opened and shut their mouths and eventually agreed that yes, they would. A clue perhaps…one of the breadcrumbs the doctor had been following when he'd died?

They made the trip once more out to Crevecoeur. Hathaway insisting all the way that they were wasting their time, there'd never been any treasure; if there had been it was long gone; and if there had been any clues—none of them were still there after all this time. But the first clue pointed the sundial straight at the folly, and the next bit seemed to point them straight on to…the Millennium Grant Project which hadn't been there more than nine years—Hathaway felt vindicated.

"There's nothing to be found," he said. "Trust me. I know this place. Not this, not the folly, not the sundial…none of it was here when that cryptogram was written."

"So, what was here?" Lewis asked.

"Well, until 2000, a rather ugly fountain…that's the point everything has changed. A treasure hunt ending at the Temple of Juno," Hathaway said indicating the statue that had replaced the ugly fountain. "It's funny…Juno and her sacred geese. You've been had. You're on a wild goose chase. What have you got against Grahame killing Black for taking his wife?"

"What have you got against this being something to do with the Mortmaignes?" Lewis asked. Right on cue Scarlet and her intended walked by and stopped to talk to Hathaway. It didn't take Lewis a minute to read the way the wind was blowing. His sergeant might have been blind to the danger opening up under his feet, but the inspector saw it instantly.

"Something you want to tell me?" he asked once the others were out of hearing range. "We're in the middle of a murder investigation, and you've got yourself what? Involved with one of the suspects?"

"I thought the investigation was done," Hathaway protested, but he'd never heard that from Lewis. Quite the opposite, in fact, more than once; he'd just failed to heed it.

"It's not! So, now what? Are you out of your mind, man? If anybody else gets wind of this, you could end up on a disciplinary charge."

"No one's going to."

"Oh, really? You sure about that?" Lewis said, but it wasn't the threat it sounded as Hathaway quickly gathered as Lewis went on, "Hooper's already putting it around the nick that you're cozying up to the nobility. I'm sure it would break his heart to lay it before the superintendent, and you'd be busted down to constable, or even dismissed."

"I'm not sure I want to wake up in twenty years' time old with nothing more to show than a life spent picking through other people's misery," Hathaway spat in Lewis' face. Which may have been true enough but neither did he want to be chucked out on his ear.

"OK," Lewis yelled back because his sergeant throwing his career away was far from it. "Well, I'll make it easy for you. You're on leave, as of now!" With Hathaway unrepentant and yet to see the danger he was in…Lewis didn't know what else to do. Hathaway involving himself with Scarlet Mortmaigne was like jumping off a cliff as far as the job was concerned and worse as far as the investigation itself was. If Lewis couldn't keep Hathaway away from the girl; he had no choice but to remove him from the investigation and hope beyond hope that when the dust settled none of it settled on her. A good defense lawyer would laugh the case right out of court if it came out the sergeant of the case…what a mess Hathaway had landed them in!

"Leave?" Hathaway said as though despite all of Lewis' rantings, he hadn't really believed there'd be consequences for his actions.

"Yeah. You're due, aren't you?"

"What about the investigation?" he protested.

"No longer your concern," Lewis said leaving Hathaway staring after him. At the last minute, he did turn back and say, "Think it over…decide what you want and let me know."


	14. Part Thirteen

And so, in both cases, the inspector in charge had pulled the leave card in an effort to protect his sergeant's career. It worked well enough for Lewis; Hathaway took his leave and considered his choices. But for Morse…it didn't work out so well.

"No, Sir, I'm not taking any leave," Lewis said and for all Morse tended to see Lewis as young and not yet a detective in his own right, he could read in his sergeant's face that Lewis was a policeman—a good one at that. Morse would never shake him loose now. He listened to his sergeant say, "And if you insist, I'll go in front of Strange with it right now," and knew it was useless to try. He'd have to rethink everything…go at things some other way; make sure when things blew up it wouldn't be in their faces…somehow. Lewis gave him a moment to let his threat sink in and then asked, "So, what about this trace on Mitchell?"

"Why not take a short cut?" Morse asked. "Why not ask his wife where he is?"

"Sounds fair. When?"

"Not yet," Morse said. And Lewis, his ever faithful sergeant who went about life always seeing the best in everything and everyone, sighed wearily, looked out the window, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. A thick stillness descended over the room and the two of them both staring pensively out twin windows of textured glass that didn't let them see a thing beyond their own thoughts. Morse didn't think he wanted to know his sergeant's; his own were full of relief and unexpressed gratitude. He needed that little bit of time to wind up Dawson and set him spinning just like he'd done to them when he'd brought them that diary entry.

Dawson played into Morse's hand all too well…

The assault on the Mitchells' house, with Mrs. Mitchell (already scared of her own shadow just a Mrs. Lapsley had said) and her son Terrence…it hadn't been pretty and it hadn't been necessary—except to show a very well-connected London chief inspector for what he was there before multiple witnesses.

Dawson's badgering of Mrs. Mitchell after they'd burst into her home…Morse had had to bar a horrified Lewis from putting a stop to the whole thing, but Dawson had gotten what he'd come for, a confession that John Mitchell had killed Mary Lapsley and the family had then lied to cover it up for all the years since.

While the poor, frightened woman wept, Lewis had stepped forward and said, "What's happened here, Sir, I just want to say, I think it's a disgrace. And so will a jury!" And that was something Morse was counting on. He wasn't proud of what he'd done bringing Dawson there and pointing him in Mrs. Mitchell's direction, but…it would keep her out of jail if things didn't go as well farther down the road, and he was glad about that.

And he'd gotten one more thing from the travesty of that assault, the unwelcome, albeit expected, confirmation that John Mitchell really had disappeared thirteen years before—his wife hadn't lied about that. And just where had the man gone? Morse was afraid he knew. And his visit to Redpath, still in hospital, but awake finally, only gave credence to his fears.

"John Mitchell could not have killed the girl…he was in bed ill with the same virus that Barbara had contracted," Redpath insisted even though it meant he himself was still in the frame for murder. No, Mitchell couldn't have killed the girl, but Dawson didn't know that. He believed without question that Mitchell had. So…a late night visit to Mr. Majors, Hilian's writer, and then…there was nothing to it but to wait for morning to come so he could hear Mary's killer's confession.

It was a scene that would always stay with Morse: the boy in the bird cage (a far too apt metaphor); the tragic story of Mary's death; and that of a father who had loved his son perhaps too much. For John Mitchell hadn't killed Mary; but he'd died for it all the same.


	15. Part Fourteen

And Black may not have found treasure, but he died for it all the same as well. With Hathaway on his enforced leave (though Lewis hadn't filed it as such; nor presented it in quite that light to Innocent… "Just needs a bit of time, Hathaway, with the trial and all? I told him to take what he needed, Ma'am") there was plenty for Lewis to do...

His first stop had been the summer house where he startled Mr. Hopkiss as he tidied up the place; His Lordship was going to take Briony through her pieces.

"Do you play?" Lewis asked.

"Good heavens, no. His Lordship did encourage me for awhile, but I wasn't a good pupil I'm afraid."

"Good of him to make the time, " Lewis noted. He'd come to have a poke around, to see if he could spot what Dr. Black had been after on his wanders through the estate, but it never hurt to gather as much information around a case as you could.

"He made time for all of us, sir, when he could."

"Why was that, do you suppose?"

"I think he'd have liked more children of his own, to leave something more of himself behind. I like to think we're all part of his legacy." Lewis pursed his lips and gave that a bit of a think. He'd never have put it that way, but he had seen Hathaway continuing on after he was out to pasture as a sort of legacy he supposed. He nodded his head and resumed his tour of the estate when Father Jasper ran after him calling his name.

"I…I," the priest tried to get the words out but couldn't catch his breath enough to speak.

Lewis said, "All right. Take your time." If he'd have known in what direction the case was about to take off, he would have begrudged that minute he stood there waiting because he could have used it later that day. The father finally managed to spit out what he'd come to say. His meditation on who had borrowed the spare chapel key sent Lewis to the Hall where he learned a lot more than he would have liked about 'them up at the house'. (Oh, spare me the lower-middle-class disapproval, please! Oi!)

"Augustus and I have an arrangement," Selina said when Lewis asked if her husband knew of her affair with Philip Coleman. "Not that I see it's any of your business."

"This is a murder, madam," Lewis said. "I'm afraid that makes everything my business." And it necessitated Lewis talking to Mortmaigne about that business.

"It seems you're determined to drag all our shortcomings into the light, Inspector," His Lordship complained. "All our vulgar, little secrets…and to what end, I ask?"

Lewis motioned to where Titus and Briony were huddled talking. "That girl's self-harming. Your protégé. Does that not concern ye?"

"I'm old, inspector, and all that matters to me is to see my daughter married, and by that, to ensure the future of Crevecoeur. As long as that happens, any…truth you may unearth about us is of no concern to me whatsoever." Brave words for a man with the sort of vulgar, little secrets Mortmaigne had buried.

Lewis left Crevecoeur late in the afternoon, his mind not half on the case. Time was he would have taken his worries home to his wife. She might not have had any more idea how to stop Hathaway from throwing everything away, but she'd have listened…and just talking it over would have helped Lewis to be able to set it aside and get on with the job. As it was, the cat, Monty as he now was, wouldn't be much if any help in that regard. Without really making the decision, Lewis didn't drive to his empty flat but to the one person, with Hathaway out of the picture, who he knew would be willing to listen.

Laura Hobson had work of her own to do, but she dropped it quickly enough to change out of her scrubs and lend him a listening ear.

"He's just not thinking straight…"

"The Zelinsky case?" she asked, because it was still there, wasn't it? Tainting everything it touched.

"Well, it's partly that, but…there's something more…to do with Crevecoeur—going back after all these years. Whatever it is, it's got him all bent out of shape."

"So, how have you left it?"

"I told him to take some time, think it over, then come and tell me what he wants." Which was true enough, though somehow it didn't convey that angry scene out at the lake.

Lewis, his mind all on his sergeant, was a bit surprised when she next asked, "What do you want him to do?"

"Me? It's not for me," he answered.

"Why not?" she asked. She gave him a look that said all too plainly she thought it should be. And that she thought he should know what he wanted.

He sighed and gave it some consideration, "Well…ah…he's an awkward sod at the best of times, but he's my awkward sod. I don't want to go to all the palaver of getting another sergeant housetrained."

"You told him?" she asked and he pulled a face. He'd known as soon as she'd made it about him that that question was bound to come up. Of course, he hadn't told Hathaway…and he didn't expect he ever would. Things like that weren't things you came out and said. They were the sort of things passed on in the doing. If after all their time together Hathaway hadn't figured out that Lewis was glad to have him around as his sergeant—well, then Hathaway wasn't the detective Lewis took him as. Not that that was anything you said to someone like Hobson; she'd never believe it, go on and on about-

Her pager cut short wherever else their conversation might have gone.

"Duty calls, I'm afraid," she said.

"Well. Thanks for. ..you know, _listening_," he told her. And if she'd been hearing the message he was meaning to say with that '_listening_' she might have said a bit more than the 'anytime' she threw out in return.

Before she left, she leaned forward and earnestly told him, "People don't know how you feel unless you tell." And he might have taken that to mean exactly what it said, if she hadn't thrown him a look over her shoulder before she walked out. Talk about not knowing how someone felt…she'd not exactly managed to keep it hidden though he reckoned she'd tried for his sake. But she'd certainly never come out and said it either. Aye, and neither had he. Not in words, but it was to her he'd come when he'd needed to talk that night and plenty others beside…if she didn't know how he felt, well—that was probably for the best.

While his boss was pouring his heart out to Hobson, or as close as he was likely to come, at any rate, Hathaway was wearing his on his sleeve. He'd pushed aside his outrage at Lewis and the imposed leave he suddenly found himself stuck with and overcame his own very serious misgivings about showing up at Scarlet's engagement party.

She seemed happy enough he had; unfortunately that didn't change her intentions.

"It doesn't have to change anything…we can still…" she said. But, they couldn't. He couldn't. He shook his head and she smiled tightly and said, "Don't be difficult, Darling—not tonight." Then she moved off to mingle with her guests, and he stood there knowing he shouldn't have come but unable to make himself leave.

Hooper stuck his head in while Lewis was giving those love letters of Linda Grahame's another look. "Lord Done a Bunk about?" he asked.

Lewis scowled and said, "If you mean Sergeant Hathaway, Hooper, say so."

"Just a bit of banter, boss, between colleagues," Hooper said. "Graduate entry though, got to expect a bit of chaff…fast-track promotion? They get it handed to them on a plate."

"Everything that man's got, he's worked for," Lewis growled at Hooper. "Believe me. So just lay off, eh?" Normally, Lewis would probably have left it there. Probably. He'd been known to dish it out himself from time to time in the past, and he still could when it was called for. But, for the most part, he tried to keep his reprimands low-key and at a reasonable voice-level nowadays—whether he'd matured past all that or just no longer cared enough to get that riled over most things, even he couldn't say. Hooper was definitely in line for a bollocking—he was doing his own stalled career no good with his loud-mouthed, disgruntled comments; but if Lewis hadn't had far too much on his mind to start with, he probably would have left it to someone else. Instead he went on, "And if you're wondering why you're twenty years older than Hathaway and still a DC, take a look in the mirror."

"What does that mean?"

Probably, even Hobson would have had to say that sometimes it was all right not telling some people what you felt about them, but Lewis told him, "It means, you've got a small mind and a big mouth, and you don't know when to keep the one open and the other one shut."

"If you say so, boss," the air was definitely coming out of Hooper's balloon, but Lewis wasn't done.

"I do say so…and when it comes to me, I'll have 'inspector' or 'sir'. Understood?"

Hooper looked suitably contrite and gave him a weak 'sir' in acknowledgement.

"Right," Lewis said in a much quieter voice and seemed somewhat deflated himself. "What do you want with him?"

"A message came through for him via relay, sir. Must have his mobile off. 'Meet me in the summer house. S.'"

Lewis took the note from Hooper and said, "All right. I'll deal." Hooper beat a quick retreat. Before Lewis could try to reach Hathaway with his message, Hobson was on the phone with tests results.

"It's Dr. Black's blood," she reported.

"No surprise there, then," Lewis noted, but there was something else. When he'd convinced her to translate the chemical gibberish into English it appeared there were also traces of cornstarch. "Must dash," she said and rang off.

Cornstarch…starch; and Hathaway's crisply starched shirt hanging there behind his desk where he'd apparently hung it and then gone off without remembering it. Hathaway…Lewis looked again at the note still in his hand and dashed off himself.

Hathaway had meant to be out at Crevecoeur that evening—and it seemed rather unlikely that Lewis' rant had changed that in the slightest. But would Scarlet really leave her own engagement party to meet Hathaway in the summer house? Not all that likely (though with all Lewis had learned about her family that day, it couldn't be totally dismissed). And if not Scarlett, who'd made plans to meet his sergeant in the summerhouse?

Lewis was afraid he could guess. And for all the lad had put Lewis through the wringer of late, the inspector had no intention of letting him rendezvous with a murderer.


	16. Part Fifteen

Hathaway found himself wandering about the party tent not quite knowing what to do with himself amongst all the happy, chattering guests and family members. He hadn't come to play policeman, but the training never really left a man once it had become a part of his makeup. He found himself frowning at the handwritten place cards on the tables and the distinctive circles dotting the 'i's looking oddly familiar…but that was—no, they couldn't match those on Linda Graham's love letters, could they?

Of course, not…but policeman's instincts; he forgot about being on leave and tried to reach Lewis on his mobile. No luck. He tried the office and caught Hooper as he was passing who sent him a picture or two via his mobile. While he waited, he checked his messages and got the one about the summer house, but Scarlet was still flitting about the tent like a shimmering, golden butterfly, and his mind was elsewhere at the moment. Comparing the pictures to the place cards…he didn't need to be a trained handwriting expert to know what his gut had been telling him for the last few minutes. He didn't know what it meant, and he was quite sure he didn't want to know. But willing or not, leave or not, he was a policeman at heart.

If…a very small word for some very large suppositions. If either Lewis or Hathaway would have had their mobiles on; if Hathaway hadn't lost his head and gotten himself a spot of unwanted leave; if he'd headed right to the summer house when the message from S. finally reached him; if Lewis hadn't been so worried about dragging his sergeant's name through the mud and called for backup; if he hadn't went running into that summer house with his mind so intent on making sure Hathaway wasn't already there in trouble that he didn't give a moment's thought to self-preservation—well, who knows what might have happened?

But, Hathaway didn't go straight-away, and when he did, it wasn't alone but with Scarlett firmly in tow, and the Mortmaignes and Colonel Coleman trailing behind. And Lewis did rush right into the trap sat for Hathaway though what he thought he'd accomplish doing so was never quite clear even to himself.

Maybe he hoped, he was wrong and that message was—what? Really from Scarlet? An attempt at seduction? An invitation to a tryst? Anything but bait for a trap. Or maybe he thought he could talk to Hopkiss, convince him the game was up, get him to confess to whatever part he'd played in the murder of Stephen Black. Hard to believe that it was sheer foolishness, for Lewis had never been a foolish man; nor stupidity, for he'd never been that either; nor bravado for again he was neither foolish nor stupid and he would have known he could never pull that off.

Maybe he didn't think at all, just reacted. Certainly, by the time Hathaway and his retinue made their way into his awareness, and he himself was facing the wrong end of Hopkiss' pistol and nursing a rather nasty head wound where Hopkiss had clocked him with it, he was thinking. And that right fast.

He'd gotten the whole sorry confession from Hopkiss by then. Knew the worst; knew it all. And all he had to do was survive long enough to bring it all to an end.

"What happens _now_?" he asked Hopkiss, but his eyes were on his sergeant and that '_now_' was designed to carry straight to Hathaway.

"I'll think of something, sir," Paul said. Still politely formal even as he raised the gun and steadied it on Lewis.

"Paul!" Hathaway called and Hopkiss turned in surprise; Lewis was on him that quick. But Hopkiss fired even as he turned. Two shots, one right after the other. Lewis had Hopkiss down and immobilized, crying for Augustus to help him, before the echoes had died away. Hathaway was there beside him, clutching his arm, but claiming to be all right when Lewis asked. Phillip Coleman though…

"I'm fine," he said, the shock keeping him from knowing the lie of his words. "Took a tumble, old girl," he told Selina. "Knocked the wind right out of me. I'll be all right in a minute." And then he was gone. What that first shot earlier at the reenactment had failed to do, the second managed all too well.


	17. Part Sixteen

And so, the Black case which began so quietly went out with a party and a good deal of excitement. But, the other case, which had started with the big do and the station full of gung-ho officers determined to bring down the killer of one of their own…

The rest of the morning was spent at the station, Terrence giving his formal statement so clearly that no one could question they were finally hearing the true confession of Mary's murder. It was enough to make a grown man cry, but they were policeman. They might grow quiet and stony-faced, but they didn't cry.

It had been a long time since Morse had filled out the paperwork for a warrant of arrest, but it seemed right that he be the one to do it. And Lewis…hadn't fully gotten the whole picture yet, for even now Morse was finding it hard to accept what he knew had happened to John Mitchell for all he knew why. Still, he took the sergeant with him when he went after Dawson, because…he wanted Lewis to see just how wrong he'd been with that jibe about professional jealousy? No, though it might have seemed that way to Lewis. He took Lewis because he needed to take someone who wouldn't let things get too far out of hand…someone who wouldn't let this end up the same sort of travesty that the assault on the Mitchells had; he took Lewis because he didn't trust himself.

He'd respected Dawson once; never liked him, but respected him. Trusted him as a colleague, as a fellow police officer, and Dawson, who was always going on about the sanctity of the law, had betrayed it all.

Morse tried to handle the matter in as quiet, and as painless, a matter as he could, but Mrs. Dawson dug her heels in when he suggested she leave the room, and there was nothing for it but to go on.

"Lewis," he ordered.

"Sir," Lewis began to protest though whether it was the order to place a fellow policeman under arrest or the performing of it in front of the man's wife Morse never knew.

"Go on, Lewis!" he yelled because the sooner this was over the better.

Lewis stepped up to the chief inspector and said, "We're here to arrest you, sir, for the murder of John Mitchell."

"Don't be ridiculous, man," Dawson replied.

Lewis pressed on, "You don't have to say anything unless you wish to do so, but anything you say may be given in evidence. "

Morse tried again, "Alone, Dawson…please."

"Get out and take him with you," Dawson yelled at Morse.

"I don't think so," Morse said and began to explain it all though Dawson, of course, already knew it all. It was Lewis standing there looking grim and far too young, and Mrs. Dawson who had to hear how little Mary had been Dawson's daughter. How he'd persecuted Redpath believing he was the man who had killed her right up until that diary entry had arrived in the mail. And how he'd believed it from the beginning…and followed its clues to John Mitchell…

"He admitted it straightaway!" Dawson recounted without any remorse whatsoever. "…so I just kept beating him until he wasn't breathing anymore. And then I buried him…he admitted it, Morse! Why would he do that?"

"Because he loved his son just as you loved your daughter," Morse told him. And Dawson had no answer to that.

"She should have been found by me…not you," he said of Mary. "She should have been held by me just once. Not sent to lie on some…slab. She should have been held."

"Perhaps she was," Morse said, a small confession of his own that passed unremarked in the shadow of Dawson's.

There was left a confession or two in the Mortmaigne case as well though those of the Mortmaignes, father and daughter, were hardly necessary. Their shortcomings and vulgar, little secrets were already laid bare. Neither denied the charges brought against them; both offered up the defense of 'love'.

Lewis sniffed and refused to give even an ounce of credence to Mortmaigne's violation of his 'special' ones having anything to do with love— and if that meant his lower-middle-class disapproval was showing then he was more than willing to let Augustus Mortmaigne know what he felt about him.

But, for his sergeant, Scarlett's confession was even worse.

"I told you I was bad," she said.

Hathaway swallowed hard but couldn't swallow down his "why?" She answered him in a voice tight with tears how she'd come upon Hopkiss in the chapel with the dead body; how Hopkiss had told her it was her father who had killed Black, and Linda Grahame, and…he'd told her why Briony's mother had had to die; and that it would all come out if she didn't help him...

"What could I do?" she asked. Somehow colluding in the murder of Briony's father and then framing him for Black's murder didn't seem like the best solution…but it wasn't really what Hathaway wanted to know anyway.

"And what about you and me?" he asked, his tone hard and untouched by her unshed tears. He'd already hardened himself to her answer; already steeled himself against the pain of her betrayal…or maybe, like the pain throbbing through his arm in the wake of a bullet, he'd simply walled it off, refused to acknowledge it or give into it.

"You didn't really think…" she started to say with an attempt to match his tone, but she couldn't pull it off. She fought to force the words out, but they wouldn't come. With a look he didn't want to read in her eyes, she finally said, "You're not one of us." She might have meant it to sound condescending or even damning, but instead it sounded desperately sad as though she wished he could have been as much as he'd once wished he was.

He looked at her and agreed, "No." Then he turned his back and walked away. He didn't see the pain in her face as she watched him, and he didn't turn to see Uniform put her in the car and drive her away.


	18. Epilogue

Lewis made his own confession, or tried to anyway, in the car on the way back to the station after Uniform had taken Dawson away.

"I got it wrong, didn't I?"

"About the father? That's understandable."

"Not about that—you know what I mean."

"Oh, you mean about me. My professional jealousy, my gross negligence. Yes, I'd say you were some way off the mark."

"No need to rub it in."

And there hadn't been. Lewis had been off the mark because that's where Morse had wanted him. He could have straightened him out, filled him in; instead, he'd left him floundering in the dark hoping Lewis wouldn't bungle into a truth that might have proved too hot to handle for the young sergeant Morse had thought him.

Looking back, Lewis couldn't say if he felt grateful or only resentful. He'd not been as young as all that; Morse might have tried trusting him…but, then, his old chief inspector had been right about a good many things. Maybe Morse had made the right call in trying to protect Lewis from himself. Impossible to know now.

And Hathaway? In a few years' time what would he look back and feel towards his old inspector and the leave he'd imposed on him over the Mortmaigne case? Would he recognize that all Lewis had wanted to do was protect him? He'd been just as frightened for Hathaway and his career as Morse had been for his. Just as desperate to keep him out of harm's way—the similarities ended there, of course.

Because, Morse had managed to bring his case to a close without any harm to Lewis' career—quite an accomplishment when it had involved bringing down a man like Chief Inspector Dawson. But, Lewis…he was lucky to still have his sergeant alive let alone in the force by the time he'd bungled his way through even if he had managed to bring down a…_creature _like Mortmaigne.

"I'm going to hand in my papers," Hathaway said. "I compromised the investigation."

"You made a mistake…you're human."

"Not good enough," Hathaway said.

Lewis looked at him and asked, "Why do you have to be better?" Hathaway stared straight ahead and didn't answer him. Or at least, Lewis hoped that wasn't his sergeant's answer because they were standing on a small rise overlooking a good deal of the Mortmaigne estate. Below them workers tore down the marquee that for a few short hours had graced the premises but would soon be as if it had never been there at all…a symbolic promise that Augustus' evil wouldn't forever after mar the beauty of the place? Lewis couldn't help thinking about how Morse might have seen it as such, but for him…the tent was doubtlessly rented; the longer it stood, the more money down the drain.

But beyond the marquee, beyond the workmen, there was the vast estate where Hathaway had played with Paul Hopkiss and the other kids. And where Mortmaigne's evil had had to taint the very air of the place touching, twisting, and warping everything it touched.

"What happened here," Lewis told the stony profile of his sergeant, "you're not to blame for any of it. Not then. Not now." And that was as far as Lewis was willing to go down that road. If there was something there…well, there might be a job for Hobson's counsellor after all. It definitely wasn't one Lewis could hope to tackle; a couple of beers wouldn't make it right no matter how much Lewis might wish they would.

"As for handing in your papers…," Lewis said, and Hathaway finally looked his way, "if it's all the same to you—between us, we make a not-bad detective." He met his sergeant's look and raised his eyebrows looking for an acknowledgement, and there was a slight relaxing in Hathaway's face in answer. "I'm the brains, obviously," Lewis quipped, pushing his advantage.

Hathaway nodded his head and let his regrets and whatever else he'd been stewing in go. "Obviously," he agreed. Lewis gave a huge inward sigh of relief and they stood there quietly enjoying the view together for another moment before it was time to get back to the job.

Author's Note: For those like me who are relatively sure that song playing though several scenes of _Second Time Around_ must have some significance but being musically illiterate have no clue what…it is an opera piece by Giacomo Puccini concerning a mother's grief over the loss of an illegitimate child. Though that seems beautifully appropriate, and I love and appreciate Barrington Pheloung's work…I have to confess I wish Dexter would not have made Morse an opera buff, and if I had to go through the show one more time to get what I needed for this story and had to listen to that song one more time—who knows what might have happened!


End file.
